
Glass. 
Book. 



PROSE 
MISCELLANIES 



THOS. E. WATSON 



THIRD EDITION 



Press of 
JEFFERSONIAN PUB. CO. 

Thomson, Ga. 
1917 



Prose Miscellanies 



Thos. E. Watson 



Third Edition 



Press of 

Jeffersonian Pub. Co. 

Thomson, Ga. 

1917 



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Copyright 

By the Author 

1912 



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Dedication 

to 

Miss Georgia Durham 



TN whose pure affection and loyal soul a briefless young law- 
yer found faA-or in the good year 1877, and who not ^o 
very long afterwards — for the course of true love, as from 
time immemorial, did not run smooth— became Mrs. Thos. E. 
Watson, and who has, ever since, walked the long path by 
his side, through health and through sickness, through joy 
and through sorrow, through sunlight and through the temp- 
est, with the unfaltering devotion of the typical wife, and 
Avho now turns with him to face the afternoon of life, with- 
out any sort of fear, and with the peace of soul that passes 
understanding. 
April 7, 1912. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Planting Corn 7 

The New Year 1 

A Forgotten Scholar 13 

A Tragedy in a Tree-top 20 

In the Mountains 24 

Convalescent 28 

Glimpses Behind the Curtain .35 

Not Quite 45 

How I Came to Write Napoleon 43 

At Fifty :. 60 

Eccentricities of Nervous People G3 

Dream Children 66 

The Oddities of the Great 70 

Bubbles on the Stream 75 

A Rose on the Snow 78 

Ee'sterie and Suggestion 81 

As It Is, and as It May Be 86 

The Song of the Bar-room 90 

The Vulture 94 

The Wine Cup 98 

Toward the Light 100 

The Country Wife 102 

The Path of Glory 103 

Is It Worth the Price? 105 

The Late 108 

The Old Packet Boat by the James 112 

An Incident in the Life of E. P. Snead 124 

Fortitude 126 



Planting Corn 



np HE bluebird was out today; out in his glossiest plumage, 
-'■ his throat gurgling with song. 

For the sunlight Avas Avarm and radiant in all the South, 
and the coming spring had laid its benediction on every field 
and hedge and forest. 

The smell of newly plowed ground mingled with the subtle 
incense of the yellow jasmine; and from every orchard, a 
shower of the blossoms of peach and apple and pear was 
wafted into the yard, and hung lovingly on the eaves and in 
the piazzas of the old homestead — the old and faded home- 
stead. 

Was there a cloud in all the sky ? Not one, not one. 

"Gee! Mule!!!" 

"Dad blast your hide, why don't you gee-e-EE ! !" 
"Co- whack" goes the plowline on the back of the patient 
mule — the dignified upholder of mortgages, "time price" 
accounts, and the family credit, generally. 

Down the furrow, and up the furrow, down to the woods, 
and up to the fence — there they go, the sturdy plowman and 
his much-enduring but indispensable mule. 

For the poplar leaves are now as big as squirrel-ears, and 
it's "time to plant com." 

On moves the ploAvman, steady as a clock, silent and reflec- 
tive. 

Right after him comes the corn-dropper, dropping corn. 

The gi-ains fairly chink as the bare feet of the corn-dropper 
hurry past; and before the corn has well cuddled itself into 
the shoe-heel of the plowman's track, down comes the hoe of 
the "coverer" — and then the seeds pass into the portals of the 
great unknown ; the unknown of burial and of life renewed. 

Peeping from the thicket, near at hand, the royal redbird 
makes note of what is going on, nor is the thrasher blind to the 
progress of the corn-dropper. And seated with calm but 
watchful dignity on the highest pine in the thicket, is the 
melancholy crow, sharpening his appetite with all the antici- 
pated pleasures of simple larceny. 

The mocking bird circles and swoops from tree to tree, and 
in his matchless bursts of varied song, no cadence is wanting, 
no melodv missed. 



S PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

The hum of the bees is in the air; white butterflies, like 
snowflakes, fall down the light and lazily float away. 

The robin lingers about the China tree, and the bluejay, 
lifting his plumed frontlet, picks a quarrel with every feath- 
ered acquaintance, and noisily asserts his grievances. 

The joree has dived deeper into the thicket, and the festive 
sapsucker, he of the scarlet crest, begins to come to the front, 
inquisitive as to the location of bugs and worms. 

On such a day, such a cloudless, radiant, flower-sweetened 
day, the horseman slackens the rein as he rides through lanes 
and quiet fields; and he dares to dream that the children of 
God onoe loved each other. 

On such a day, one may dream that the time might come 
when the}'^ avouIcI do so again. 

Rein in and stop, here on this high hill ! Look north, look 
east where the sun rises, look south, look west where the sun 
sets — on all sides the steady mule, the steady plowman, and the 
children dropping corn. 

Close the eye a moment and look at the picture fancy 
paints. Every field in Georgia is there, every field in the South 
is there. And in each, the figures are the same — the steady 
mule and the steady man, and the pattering feet of the chil- 
dren dropping corn. 

In these furrows, lies the food of the republic; on these 
fields, depend life, and health and happiness. 

Halt those children, and see how the cheek of the world 
would blanche at the thought of famine ! 

Paralyze that plowman — and see how national bankruptcy 
would shatter every city in the Union. 

Dropping corn ! A simple thing, you say. 

And yet, as those white seeds rattle down to the sod and 
hide away for a season, it needs no peculiar strength of fancy 
to see a Jacob's ladder crowded with ascending blessings. 

Scornfully, the railroad king would glance at these small 
teams in each small field : yet check those corndroppers, and 
his cars would rot on the road and rust would devour the 
engines in the roundhouse. The banker would ride through 
those fields thinking only of his hoarded millions, nor would 
he ever startle himself with the thought that his millions 
would melt away in mist, were those tiny hands never more to 
be found dropping corn. The bondholder, proud in all the 
security of the untaxed receiver of other people's taxes, would 
see in these fields merely the industry from which he gathers 
tribute; it would never dawn on his mind, that, without the 
opening of those furrows and the hurrvinsr armv of children 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 9 

dropping corn, his bond wouldn't be worth the paper it is 
written on. 

Great is the might of this republic! — great in its schools, 
churches, courts, legislatures; great in its towns and cities; 
great in its commerce, great in its manufactures, great in its 
colossal wealth. 

But sweep from under it all these worn and wasted fields, 
strike into idleness or death the plowman, his wife and his 
child, and what becomes of the gorgeous structure whose foun- 
dation is his field ? 

Halt the food growers, and what becomes of your gold and 
its "intrinsic value"? 

How much of your gold can you eat ? 

How many of your diamonds will answer the need of a 
loaf? 

But enough. 

It is time to ride down the hill. The tinkle of the cow- 
bell follows the sinking sun — both on the way home. 

So, with many an unspoken thought, I ride homeward, 
thinking of those who plant the corn. 

And hard indeed would be the heart that, knowinsr what 
these people do and bear and suffer, yet would not fashion 
this prayer to the favored of the republic: "O rulers, law- 
makers, soldiers, judges, bankers, merchants, editors, lawyers, 
doctors, preachers, bondholders ! Be not so unmindful of the 
toil and misery of those who feed youP'' 



The New Year 

T EAD us gently. Father Time, as you take us to the portals 
^-^ of the New Year. 

We know not what may be within ; and our souls are 
burdened with fear, as we stand here at the door. 

Lost, forever lost, is the Confidence with which we used to 
go bounding into the New Year — as revellers hastening: to the 
feast. 

We have met the Unforeseen so often, have mourned where 
we thought to have rejoiced, been trampled upon amid the 
horrors of panic and defeat, where we had so stoutly fought 
for victory and reward, that our hearts are sadly subdued. 

We did not seek this awful life-woe. Father Time. 

Thrust, from some great outer darkness into the hurly- 
burly called Life, we gaze upward at the stars, in helpless igno- 
rance of what it all may mean; and some irresistible force 
pushes us, pushes us, swiftly, inexorably, onward to another 
outer darkness that fills us with speechless awe. 

Have mercy on us, Father Time. We have been beaten with 
many stripes, are covered with many wounds. 

God ! How we have suffered ! 

We knew nothing at the beginning, and we know but little 
now ; and for every lesson we have learned, we have been made 
to pay in heart-aches and scalding tears. 

Always struggling, often down, always anxious for the 
morrow, often in torture today, we have stumbled forward. 
Father Time, still looking for the smooth road and the sunny 
sky, and the bright companionship of success and peace. 

Shall we never see them, Father Time ? 

We shudder when we think what vou did to us during the 
Old Year, Father Time. 

Ah, but you were hard on us — bitter hard. Our little ones 
panted for a breath of fresh air. Father Time: and thev died 
like flies, in noisome, reeking, crowded tenements, because there 
was not. in all God's universe — where there's lisfht and air 
for every flower that flecks the field — a breath of fresh air for 
the little children of the slums. 

Ah, it was pitiful. Father Time! 

Our feeble ones, young and old, perished miserably of cold 



-r 



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PROSE MISCELLANIES. 11 

and hunger, in the midst of a hind that worships tlie Good God, 
and amid such an accumulation of wealth as was never known 
before since the morning stars looked down upon a newly-made 
world. 

Poverty, crime, vice, drunkenness, riot, war, famine, pesti- 
lence, earthquake, and conflagration have glutted their awful 
appetites upon us during the Old Year, Father Time. To 
what are you leading us in the New ? 

Will the heart of the world grow harder and harder, 
Father Time? 

Will the greed of human avarice demand still larger sacri- 
fice of human lives? 

Will the selfishness of Classes sforsre itself still further UDon 
ravenous conquests, and remorseless exploitation? 

Shall the cry of the white slave never reach Heaven, Father 
Time? 

Shall the song of the angels who hung over the infant 
Christ, never throb, a living principle, in man's government 
of man ? 

Is the reformer always to be the martyr, Father Time ? 

Is wrong never to be dethroned ? 

Oh, Father Time ! We tremble as we feel vou leading us 
toward the door of the New Year. Beyond that portal we 
cannot see, and we dread it — as children dread the dark. 

Deal gently with us in the New Year, Father Time. 

Give us strength to bear the cross — for we know that we 
must bear it. 

Give us courage for the battle, for- we know that we must 
fight it. 

Give us patience to endure, for we know that we shall 
need it. 

Give us charity that thinks no evil, and which will stretch 
forth the helpful hand to lift our weaker brother out of the 
mire, rather than the creul scorn which passes him hv. or 
thrusts him further down. ^ -^ 

Give us faith in the right which no defeat can disturb, 
and no discouragement undermine. 

Give us the love of truth which no temptation can seduce, 
and no menace can intimidate. 

Give us the fortitude which, through the cloud and the 
gloom and the sorrow of apparent failure, can see the distant 
pinnacles upon which the everlasting sunlight rests. 

Give us the pride which sutFers no contamination, no com- 
promise of self-respect, no wilful desertion of honest convic- 
tion. 



12 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

Give us the purpose that never turns, and the hope that 
never dies. And, Father Time, should the New Year, into 
which you are taking us, have upon its calendar that day in 
which the few that love us shall be bowed down in sackcloth 
and ashes, let that day, like all other days, find us on duty- 
faithful to the end. 




LEAD us GENTLY. FATHER TIME. 



A Forgotten Scholar 

HAVE you ever heard of Hugh Swinton Legare ? 
His father was one of those Husnienots who left France 
because of religious intolerance, and came to America because 
of its promise of freedom. „ ^ . , , 

His mother belonged to the Scotch family of Swinton, whose 
warriors defended the border, and whose names are honored 
in the chronicles of Froissart and Walter Scott. 

Hugh Swinton Legare was born in Charleston, bouth 
Carolina, January 2, 1797. A large, well-formed child, he grew 
to be almost a deformed man, on account of having been 
vaccinated for smallpox. Fearing that the disease might 
attack the boy, his fond parents delivered him to a doctor, who 
gave him such a bad case of artificial smallpox that he never 
got over it. For months he was kept flat on his back, his knee 
joints and elbow joints terriblv inflamed. For eight years his 
growth was arrested, and when he did begin to grow to man- 
hood, the growth was mostly above the waist line. 

Therefore, Hugh Swinton Legare had the head, shoulders 
and chest of a finely shaped man, while his lower limbs were 
so short in comparison that there was no beauty of proportion. 
Seated, he seemed a magnificent specimen of manhood; 
standing, he had none of the impressiveness of stature which 
adds so much to the "imposing presence." 

As a boy, his infirmity made him unfit for rough games 
and exercises. Naturallv, he took to solitude and books. 

His father died while Hugh was very young, and to his 
mother was left his training and education. 

Mary Swinton Legare was one of the noblest women of 
the Old South— and when that is said no more can be said. 
To make of her bright boy a useful man, became the purpose 
of her life; and to her pure teachings, her firm control, her 
wise guidance, Hugh Legare was indebted for the splendid 
honesty of character, the unselfish devotion to high ideals, 
that makes a study of his modest career so beneficial. 

After some preliminary schooling, which included a course 
at the celebrated Academy of Dr. Moses Waddell, Hugh 
Legare spent four years in Columbia College and graduated 
with the highest honors. (December, 1814.) 

The next three years. y(Uing Legare devoted to a study ot 
the law; and at the age of twenty-one, he could have com- 



(13 



14 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

menced the practice of his profession, better equipped than 
Benjamin Butler, Daniel Webster, William H. Crawford. 
Henry Clay, or George McDuffie. 

But young Legare had a scholar's lust for knowledge, and 
he went to Europe to complete his education. 

In his beautiful letters to his mother, he tells of his studies 
m Edinburgh, Scotland; then of his travels and studies on the 
C'Ontinent. 

After two years abroad he returned to Charleston, and 
two more years were spent in the study of law. And then 
he was admitted to the Bar. 

Now, let those young men of the present day who bemoan 
the fact that they have no college education, study the fate of 
Hugh S. Legare. 

Fortune gave him ample means to attend schools, ransack 
libraries, pursue knowledge, exhaust the sources of informa- 
tion, both at home and abroad. Nature gave him as fine an 
intellect as ever warmed the heart and whetted the zeal of a 
teacher. He could learn and he could remember. He could 
think, as well as learn. He was an effective speaker and a 
magnificent writer. In a classical controversy he could, and 
did, make a monkey out of the famous Englishman, Lord 
Brougham. His essay on Demosthenes is one of the finest 
things in the English language, and Rufus Choate is said to 
have never tired of reading it. 

His paper on the "Democracy of Athens" has never been 
surpassed in solid, sterling value, by Macaulay, Carlyle, or 
anybody else. 

His argument against Nullification is sounder than Web- 
ster's, for it is not built upon a false foundation, as Webster's 
was. 

In short, Hugh Swinton Legare was, perhaps, as able a 
man, naturally, as Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, or Craw- 
ford : and, r/,s o s-rhoJar, he infinitely surpassed them all. He 
had read more books, garnered more knowledge, learned more 
languages, spent more time in preparation than any of them. 

Academically, he was easily the master of'the Avhole group 
— Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Benton, Crawford. That is to; say, 
in book learning he excelled them all. He probably knew 
more than all three of "the Great Trio," with Benton and 
Crawford thrown in for good measure. 

Why is it, then, that Hugh S. Legare never succeeded in 
proportion toiiis natural ability and his mental culture? Why 
is it that nearly every schoolboy knows something of Clay, 
Webster and Calhoun, while not one boy in ten thousand will 
ever hear of Hugh Legare? Why is it that the speeches and 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 15 

writings of Clay, Webtser and Calhoun are to be found in 
all the book catalogues, while the writings and speeches of 
Legare are the "rare specimens" of a few libraries? 

It is a curious conundrum, and illustrates what I have 
long been saying to the young men — namely, that a collegiate 
education is not absolutely necessary to the success of a 
practical layer. 

Abraham Lincoln had almost no sort of an education, vet 
see what a success he was as a lawyer. 

Ben Butler had only a smattering of collegiate education, 
yet he put Rufus Choate to rout, the very first time they 
clashed. 

George McDuffie had no education to compare with 
Legare's, yet Legare had no practical success to compare with 
that of McDuffie. 

Think of these things, young man, and don't^ be down- 
hearted because you are too poor "to go to college." 

Lots of men "who were never great, "went to college;" lots 
of men who were great, didn't. 

So, you see, it's a question of lohat is in you. 
If you haven't got within you the stuff out of which suc- 
cessful men are mae, no teacher, no book, no college will ever 
put it there. 

If you have got the right sort of stuff in you, and will 
dash ahead, determined to succeed, as Clay. Jackson and Lin- 
coln did, you will succeed, just as they did. 

Andrew Jackson got a college degree — got it in New Eng- 
land, at that — ^but it was after he had become a success as a 
lawyer, a merchant, a farmer, a soldier and a politician. He 
did not get that college degree until he was President of the 
United States. The school advertised itself a little by giving 
the lii'eat Tennessean a degree which he couldn't read — for it 
was m Latin. Old Hickory laughed as they mumbled over 
the words of the degree, and remarked that the only Latin he 
knew was, E Plunhus Unum. 

What was the matter with Hugh Swinton Legare? Why 
did not his success measure up to the scale of his prepara- 
tions? Because his perfect culture had put him out of touch 
with the men among whom he moved. His eminence was an, 
isolation. Placed above the average of his community by his 
elaborate education, he was not in sympathy with the average 
man. and the average man was not in sympathy with him. 

But it is the average man who gives verdicts and votes ; it 
IS the average man whose shouts of applause make the tempo- 
rary fame which rules the court-room and the hustings. To be 
so highly educated as to lose touch with the average man, is 



1(3 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

to be over-educated. Mr. Legare himself sadly admitted, that 
he had wasted too much time in preparation. He had mingled 
so long with scholars and book-worms, had lingered so lov- 
ingly in academies and libraries, that he was not fitted for the 
companionship of the average man, or the hurly-burly of the 
busy world. 

It became his deepest regret that he had not thrown him- 
self earlier into the struggle of life, and learned the ways of 
men by practical experience. 

As suggested by his biographer, he had become too supe- 
rior to the commonplace man to exert any influence over that 
commonplace man He was so uncommon in his perfect cul- 
ture, that he could not get the benefit of his actual talent 
among common men. 

Like a man who would put all his money in big bills, he 
could not get about the world as well as the man who carries 
small change. . 

After he had been a lawyer some years— years in which 
McDuffie, Petigru and other less learned lawyers were earn- 
ing big fees— Legare was asked by a friend how he was getting 
along. 

"Sir," answered he, "do you ask how I get along? I will 
tell you. I have a variety of cases, and, by the bounty of 
Providence, sometimes get a fee; but in general. Sir, I practise 
upon the old Roman plan; and, like Cicero's, my clients pay 
me what they like— that is, often, nothing at all." 

He served two or three terms as a member of the Lesris- 
lature, and his reputation as a man of great powers and 
attainments spread among those who could best appreciate 
him. 

After awhile he was appointed Attorney-General for the 
State of South Carolina. Duty calling him to the Supreme 
Court of the United States, he made an argument before that 
tribunal which showed what he really was, and which fixed 
his status as one of the great lawyers of his time. 

He soon afterward accepted an appointment, in the dip- 
lomatic service, and represented his Government as Charge 
d' Affaires at Brussels. Here he must have enjoyed himself 
thoroughly, for he moved in the best society, was treated 
with the 'utmost consideration, and had the companionship 
of scholars, the living and the dead. 

Returning to Charleston (1836), he was elected to Con- 
gress, where he at once made a brilliant record in debate: but 
he was thrown out at the next election by a hostile local com- 
bination. 

Resuming the practice of law, he was now employed in 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 17 

some really good cases, and, I hope, got some good fees. It 
was time. 

He took a prominent part in the Presidential campaign of 
1840, making speeches in Richmond, and New York, which 
were considered magnificent. 

Next year the original Harrison Cabinet resigned, and Mr. 
Legare was appointed Attorney-General of the United States. 

Nobody questioned his fitness for this high place, and his 
conduct of the business of the oflEice was a success. When Mr. 
Webster retired from the State Department, President Tyler 
confided to Mr. Legare, ad interim, the care of that depart- 
ment. 

Thus Mr. Legare was doing double duty, and his strength 
failed under it. 

His sister, Mrs. Bryan, to whom he was tenderly attached, 
died in July, 1842. 

The January following, he lost his mother, whom he had 
loved to the last with boyish' devotion, the mother to whom he 
wrote from Europe, in 1819: 

"The whole happiness of my life is henceforth to make 
you happy." 

A noble pledge ! and nobly kept. 

In 1843^ he went with the President to Boston to take part 
in the Bunker Hill celebration. Seized by a sudden and vio- 
lent illness (June 16), he was unable to attend the ceremonies, 
and died on the morning of June 20. 

He had never married. 

Taken altogether, here was, to me, one of the saddest of 
records. 

Who could have begun the race of life with better chances 
to win it than Hugh Legare ? 

By birth, he belonged to the slave-holding aristocracy, the 
alleged ruling class of his State, He had the benefit of the 
best education that money could buy. He literally ransacked 
the world in his quest of knowledge. 

He had a mind of high order to start with, and his indus- 
try in improving it has seldom been surpassed. 

His character was without a blemish; his disposition 
amiable; his manners those of the accomplished gentleman. 
He neither drank and gambled, like Henry Clay, nor did he 
play cards and get drunk, like Daniel Webster. He had no 
quarrels and duels, as McDuffie had; raised no rows at horse 
races and other places, as Andrew Jackson did; shot down no 
enemies in street fights, as Thomas H. Benton did; beat no 
Congressman with a stick, as Sam Houston did; had no feud 
with a neighbor about that neighbor's pretty wife, as Jeffer- 



18 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

son had; and published no Mrs. Reynolds Confessions, as 
Hamilton thought it necessary to do. 

No! Hugh S. Legare was a "Mother's boy" — a model of 
good conduct and of good character; a model student, a good 
citizen, elaborately equipped to be a model lawyer, a model 
orator, and a model statesman. 

Yet he failed. 

He failed all along the line. He tried to run a magazine, 
The Southern Review, but his articles went over the heads of 
the people, and the magazine died of too much learning. 

He tried politics, and "practical fellows" tripped him and. 
passed on ahead. 

He tried to be a lawyer, and, so far as knowing the law 
was concerned, Webster was not his equal, nor Pinckney his 
superior, but Webster and Pinckney had a success at the bar 
which painfully dwarfs the career of Legare. He made fine 
speeches, but couldn't keep in the swim. A favorite among 
scholars, the common people loved him not. He did not 
understand them, nor they him. The mystic tie of sympathy 
was not there. 

"I started too late; I lingered over books too long; I 
should have plunged into the fight earlier, trusted more to my 
natural capacity and less to education. / ain over-educated.'''' 

Was there ever a mournfuller wail than this? 

He took no sweet woman to wife; children came not to sit 
upon his knee. Books — and his sisters ; books — and his mother ; 
books — and some forgotten speeches; books — and a few mas- 
terful but neglected essays; books — and a few second-rate ap- 
pointments to office; books — and a sudden breakdown and 
death. 

It is almost appalling; so much study and so little result; 
so much labor and so little done. Such royal liberalitv in 
seed-sowing, and such a beggerly harvest. 

Had the handsome, brilliant, sweet-tempered, golden- 
hearted Hugh Legare buckled right down to practical affairs, 
as soon as he left college, getting used to the ways of folks, 
wearing ott" the wire edge and getting on working terms with 
the average man, gaining by actual exerience that knowledge 
of men and things which cannot be got in any other way; 
had he got down olf the high horse and mixed and mingled 
with the boys; had he studied Tom, Dick and Harry, and 
caught the cue; had he looked upon the marvellous leaves in 
the great book of Human Nature and read what is written 
there; had he made himself a man among men, caught the 
glow of their passions, felt the warmth of their sympathies, 
swam in the current of their energies and their practical pur- 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 19 

poses, he would have known better how to talk to them, how 
to get votes and verdicts from them, how to mold their con- 
victions and lead their advance. 

Had he got down upon the ground floor with the people, 
as all Americans who have achieved great practical success as 
lawyers, authors, orators and political leaders have had to do, 
he might have been as powerful with the pen as Horace Gree- 
ley; on the hustings, he might have equalled Clay; in the 
court-room, Webster would have met him with the stern joy 
which warriors feel in foemen worthy of their steeL 

As it is, he is but a memory in the minds of a few. 

He went forth into the fields of toil, and came back with 
empty arms. 

He spoke, and nobody heard. 

He wrote, and nobody read. 

Upon the sands of time he left no trace. 

The. brilliant morning of his life led to no midday splendor, 
no gorgeous afternoon, no immortal afterglow. 

Only the curious student, exploring obscure corners of the 
library, and poring over ''quaint and curious volumes of for- 
gotten lore," will ever learn the strangely melancholy story of 
the forgotten scholar, Hngh Swinton Legare. 



A Tragedy in a Tree Top 

npHE blizzard of 1895, which froze the tea-olive, the banana 
■*■ shrub and the japonica, came near killing the live-oaks 
which had grown from the acorns I brought home from South 
Georgia when I was a young lawyer. 

She planted them on the sunny side of the chicken house, 
and when the trees grew large enough to demand more space, 
I pulled down the house. Yes, the inner bark of the live oaks 
turned dark that winter, and it took copious waterings next 
spring to carry them through the summer. 

But in April, 1896, when I came to note the many gaps 
which the frost had made in the shrubbery, I missed some- 
thing else. 

No blue-birds came singing in the apple trees. 

The cold had been too much for them. The hollows where 
they had made their winter homes had been their sepulchers, 
and the April sun carried no warmth to the pitiful little forms 
in blue, rigid and decayed. ^ 

It was in the spring of 1898, that I was riding along 
through the country, some ten miles out from town, when with 
a thrill of joy I heard the old familiar notes of the blue-bird. 

Sure enough, here were half a dozen of the tribe, chirping 
musically in the sunlight. 

After that they gradually became more common, and in 
1902 they were once more flitting about the orchard and the 
cornfield. 

Two years ago I watched a pair closely, and found the nest. 

Creeping up to the old apple tree, I peeped down into the 
hollow, and there cuddled at the bottom, were four well- 
feathered youngsters that would soon be ready to fly. 

In a few days the entire family of six, the parents and the 
four children, were out in the cornfield, all singing together, 
flocking together, as companionable as folks, and giving every 
evidence of complete enjoyment of life. 

Thus the blue-birds made a home with us and multiplied. 
But the next winter was very severe. Twice the sleet drove 
down from the North and chained the South. Every tree 
wore its armor of ice, and when the hoarse wind blew, ev^en 
the giant oaks and hickories and pines shivered and bent, 
while great limbs were sna])ped and hurled to the sfround. 

It was bitter hard upon the birds. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 21 

So, then, when the warm days of spring came on, She and 
I thoug:ht we woiikl do something especially good for our 
feathered friends, and we put up the boxes in the trees, boxes 
in which they could nest. In this way the cold rams and chdl 
winds would not endanger the young birds. Up went the 
boxes, and the birds came. 

But only two blue-birds— just one pair. 
All the others had perished of cold. Great was our delight 
when we made certain that this pair had begim to build a nest 
in one of our boxes. 

I happened to see them first, and told the good news. 
^'Oh, isn't that fine!" cried She, clapping her hands, her 
eyes a-dance with joy. 

"But we must not let them catch us watchmg them, said 
She, "because that might make them leave the nest." 

So we were over-cautious, and I kept away from the tree 
lest I should alarm the busy home-makers. 

From week to week, I merely made sure that the birds were 
still at work in the box— and that made us content. One dav 
in April one of these blue-birds sang with a volume which 
attracted my attention. I had never known one to repeat its 
simple little notes so continuously and so loudly. 

Usually a blue-bird is subdued; this one was almost bois- 
terous. , 

Something or other— I don't know what— made me uncom- 
fortable I got the vague impression that the bird was in dis- 
tress Yet there was nothing disturbing it. Had it flown 
back and forth from the box, or had it hovered about that 
tree, I should have suspected the horrible truth. 

But the bird was quite a distance from the box, and 1 
could not dream that such a tragedy had happened as I now 
know had happened. . 

My usual monthly trip to Xew York occupied ten days, 
and on my return I looked for the young blue-birds. 
They were not to be seen. 

I made inquiries, but none on the place had seen any. 
That evening at dusk I saw one of the birds alight on the 
shelf of the box and look in upon the nest. 

All is well, I thought. But next day I became uneasy. It 
was tmie the young birds were out. 

What had happened ? ., , n u i 

The fear of doing harm to the little family held me back 
until nearly nightfall, and then I could stand it no longer. 1 
must see what was the matter. 

"Bring me the step ladder, Steve." 



22 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

It was a rickety old thing, and Steve had to grip it at the 
bottom while I went np. 

Reaching the level of the nest I peered in, but the limbs of 
the tree shut out the light, and I could see nothing. 

"Run and bring me some matches, Steve." 

He brought them, and when I struck one of them and 
looked in, there was something that looked like fish-scales. 

Puzzled and alarmed, I struck another match, and looked 
more closely. 

There was no sound from within the box and no siffn of 
life. 

What pathetic mystery was this? 

"Steve, this looks like the skin of a snake!" 

"Law. Boss! Come down from dere and let's wait till 
mornin'." 

"While Steve Avas working up an excitement from below, I 
lit another match, poked about in the box, and became con- 
vinced that no life of any sort was there. 

Whatever had been done, was finished. 

We wrenched the box from its fastenin2:s in the tree, and 
took it out into the open Avliere the light was l)etter. 

When the roof had been knocked oil', I pulled out the con- 
tents of the box and spread them on the ground. 

The birds had made an unusuallv large nest. Thev had 
evidently fallen in love with their house. Thev had intended 
to make it their permanent home. 

In the nest were four eggs, looking old and dry and dis- 
colored. 

And ihere was the rasf-off skin- of a snake/ 

It lay along that empty nest, that blighted home^ghastly 
memorial of the tragedy in the tree. 

What had occurred? 

The snake, probably a black tree-climber, had found his wav 
into the nest, and swallowed the mother bird, and then orone 
into quarters there until it had cast off ,its skin. It had 
appropriated the proi)erty after having devoured the owner. 

Bt why had the eggs been left? 

I cannot guess, unless it be that they were stale, and that 
even a snake dislikes stale eggs. 

The supi>er bell rang, and I went into the house. 

As I took mv seat at the table, I said heavilv : 

'"'The poor tittle hinhr 

Then She knew that there had been a tragedy. 

She heard the story, and neither of us wanted any supper. 
It went below, untasted. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 23 

The big yellow moon came soaring over the woods, and 
Hickory Hill was soon in a blaze of silvery liffht. 

But the mocking-bird that was singing so sweetly down 
in the meadow seemed almost a nuisance, for I couldn't get my 
thoughts oil* the snake and the missing bird. 

Ah, if you could see the Avidower — the survivinar bird ! It 
would touch your heart. He will not return to the tree any 
more. He goes fui-ther from the house every day. 

I know now that when I saw him on the shelf lookinii; in 
upon his ruined home, he was paying his last visit. 

I know now that when he was singing so stridently that 
day in April, the serpent was already in his home and he 
without a mate. 

The last I saw of him was early yesterday morning. The 
sun was glorious: birds of every sort were bringing olf their 
young, and the air thrilled with their songfs. 

And the blue-bird sang also, but mournfully — and he had 
already left my place. He was perched at the top of a tall 
tree in the adjoining field. 

He sang and sang and sang — calling for his mate, perhaps 
— and then a bee-martin struck savagely at the homeless, 
mateless blue-bird, and, with a melancholy chirp, he disap- 
peared in the remote woods. 



In the Mountains 



r\ N this gray pinnacle of rock, I sit enthroned ; the clouds 
^^ hang their curtains far below, for this is ''Mountain Top," 
in the Blue Ridge. 

Down the valley, to the east, towers Jetierson's last great 
work, the University of Virginia; on the right, the blue haze 
makes dim the outline of the giant peaks, which stand guard 
over the glories of the Rock-fish Valley ; far away to the west, 
stretches the Valley of Virginia, with the North Mountains 
losing themselves in the skies; and over yonder to the North- 
east, are the eternal hills which saw Stonewall Jackson's march 
to fame. 

Is there in the whole world a lovelier view than this? 
Does Nature anywhere gather together so many of her 
treasures within the range of human eye? 

Here is the ever changing play of light and shade as the 
clouds rest or move, anchor or sail, collect or scatter, smile 
or frown, fleck the heavens with gold or strew the beach of 
the horizon with broken waves of foam. Here is the limitless 
wealth of field and forest — fields forever green, and forests 
whose infinite variety defies the winter to strip them bare and 
the summer to find them stale. 

Here are the crystal waters, bursting from the blue slate 
rock and dashing with reckless speed down a thousand hidden 
waterfalls to the rivers which pierce the plains. A nobleman's 
park, after a century of care and cost, is not more grateful to 
the eye than these wonderful slopes and natural swards 
cropped close by the flocks, trodden smooth by the herds. And 
if you will pluck one of each of all the flowers and ferns which 
Nature's garden tenders you here, the nobleman will envy you 
the richness and the fragrance of the field. 

This rock is my throne, and as I gaze upon the soul-lifting 
sublimity of the landscape, I feel like crying out. as Gold- 
smith did when he looked down from the Alps, "The world, 
the world is mine!" 

This farm may belong to Jones, that forest to Brown, this 
mountain to Smith, that orchard to Tompkins, but the land- 
scape is mine, is yours, is anybody's ! 

He that has eyes to see, let him see. 

Down yonder in front of me, looking east, is the Rock-fish 

(24) 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 25 

Gap ! It was the first passway for pioneers crossing the Blue 
Ridge to reach the Alleghany mountains. For years, this was 
the road the emigrant took going West. See how deeply 
worn into the rocky earth is this ancient highway, even on the 
very summit of the Gap. 

Are you much of a dreamer? Here is the place to dream 
dreams and see visions. 

Fill that time-worn road with the pioneers who made it; 
call back the adventurers who once thronged it, and you will 
see the banners of civilization flying over the dauntless men in 
buckskin who pass upward and outward and onward, from the 
valleys of the lower Soutli to found empires in the West. 
People the Gap with those whose rifle and axe afterwards 
made the "winning of the West," and you will see the militant 
cohorts of the white man's ambition and daring and ideals 
go marching by ! Deep, deep is the hard soil, worn by their 
tireless feet; and if the Old Road of Ohain marks one epoch 
of English heroism, it is as nothing in lasting importance, 
world-wide significance, to the Old Road on Mountain Top, 
trenched out by the westward foot-beat of those who aspired 
and ventured and endured — striving to make this Nation the 
greatest on earth. 

Out of Albemarle and up through this Gap, passed George 
Rogers Clark on his marvelous march to the Wabash — a 
march whose surpassing heroism added four States to the 
Union and to civilization. 

Through this Gap, and likewise from Albemarle, came 
Lewis and Clark on their way to plant our flag upon the 
Rockies, the Columbia, and tlie Pacific, 

Greatest of all who toiled up the mountain, passed the Gap 
and stopped at the old Tavern, was Jefferson. From Albe- 
marle he had gone to write the first real defiance to King 
George; to break down feudalism in Virginia and foreisfn 
tyranny in the Confederation ; to write the statute of religious 
toleration, and the Declaration of Independence, to send forth 
Lewis and Clark to the unexplored West, and to add a dozen 
great States to the Union, in the Louisiana purchase. 

In his old age, in his decrepitude, he painfully made his 
way from Albemarle to this ruined Tavern on Mountain Top, 
and met in conference Madison, Monroe and others of the eld- 
ers in Israel, his purpose being to convince them that his Uni- 
versity — the Benjamin of his old age — should be located at 
Albemarle. 

It was so decided at the conference; and when you go to 
Monticello they will show you the spot where the feeble Jef- 



26 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

ferson, too weak to ride any more, used to sit, glass in hand, 
and watch the bnikling of the walls of his great school. 

Yes, indeed yon can dream dreams at Mountain Top, and 
see visions. 

Washington, stately and grave, goes by to the Indian wars; 
the chiefs who used to stop at Peter Jeft'erson's for advice, and 
to whose pathetic pleas for justice young Thomas used to 
listen, passed along this trail to Albemarle; then the day came 
when the last Indian Avarrior stood there, to gaze in despair 
over the land he had lost, as the Moorish king looked back 
upon lost Granada. 

Down yonder, on the green slope, by the scraggy trees and 
the group of springs, lie the ruins of the ancient Tavern, and 
among them you will mark a large pile of bricks. Sort these 
out curiously, and j'ou will find a few which have upon them 
the hoof-prints of the dogs which were chasing the deer. 

It was in the olden time. The bricks, in the mud state, 
were lying spread out in the "yard," the chase went tearina: 
by, the terror-maddened stag left his tracks on the bricks, and 
the hounds left theirs, also. 

Here they are, curious mementos; and another Keats — 
gazing upon those footprints of the deer, which is now a shade ; 
the pack which chased it, also a shade; and the hunter who 
followed the pack, likewise a shade — all gone, save this tablet, 
which tells of the lust of pursuit and the agony of flight — could 
even match the almost matchless ''Ode to a Grecian Urn.*' 

Here, on the ridge commanding the mouth of the pass to 
the North, are seven semicircles of earth and rock thrown up 
at wide intervals. 

What's this? 

When pioneers passed through the gap going out from 
Virginia, no redoubts confronted them ; only the Indian with 
his bow or rifle. Who were they that wanted to come back 
through the Gap and were met with guns in the battery ? 

They were the children of those who had gone from the 
South to the winning of the West ; and. from the conquered 
West, they came through the Gap which their fathers had 
worn deep in the soil — came to conquer and devastate the 
South. 

Far down there, on the plains at the foot of the mountains, 
lies Waynesboro; and, at Waynesboro, Sheridan and Early 
fought. 

Let your eye range over that wondrous valley ; in your 
fancy you can fill it with warring armies, dead and dvina" 
men, riderless horses, burning towns, ruined homes. Into 
many of those valley cisterns and Avells, dead men were flung 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 27 

until the cistern was full. Manj^ of those gardens over there 
have trenches full of soldiers' bones. 

And through this famous Gap rode and marched the Blue 
and the Gray, until that splendid gentleman and soldier, 
Colonel C. C. Talliaferro, of Roanoke, carried the flag of peace 
from Lee to Grant, and Appomattox rang the curtain down. 

We were sitting on a huge boulder, gazing towards the 
Massanutten Mountains, when he said to me, reflectively, look- 
ing ati the ruins of the old Tavern : 

"The last time I was here, was forty-odd years ago. I was 
going horseback on a stafl" duty for General Lee, to Charlottes- 
ville. I rode in at t^iat lower gate yonder, and stopped in 
front of the Tavern. I recollect that a number of gentlemen 
were sitting on the veranda, drinking mint- juleps. I asked if 
I could get something to feed my horse on, and I was told that 
I couldn't. There Avas nothing to feed him on. I had to ride 
on down to Afton to get him fed." 

After the war, this officer went to school at Lexington ; then 
he settled in Georgia, became one of my lieutenants in the great 
battle for Populism, got enough of that pretty soon, and is 
now, like "the Thane of Cawdor, a prosperous gentleman," who 
attends to his own private business, and doesn't care "a conti- 
nental d — n" for politics. 

Meanwhile, I still dream dreams and see visions: and I 
look through and beyond these shadows of the valley, to where 
the sunlight catches the far-off tops of the mountains; and 
while I know that the distance is too great for me now, and the 
climb too much for my strength, yet the course shall be laid 
towards it, even though I go alone, and do not reach the 
heights. 



Convalescent 



VAOU had been a very sick man. For months the elements 
of disease had been gathering in your system — you had 
vaguely suspected it, and had spoken of it — but had not known 
what to do; so you had gone on from week to week, slowly 
approaching a crisis. At last some trifling cause, some one- 
straw-too-many, had precipitated the inevitable, and had 
knocked you over. It might have been a stale "blue point" at 
a late dinner, a tainted bit of fish, ^a salad which angrily 
resented the wine — it might have been one of a dozen errors in 
diet; but, whatever it was, you awoke at midnight to find 
yourself in the throes of pain, and with the swiftest possible 
speed you stepped down toward the Valley of the Shadow. 

Week after week you lay abed, racked with pain. The 
frightful cough which shook 3^ou almosf to the point of 
exhaustion, the shiver of cold and the burning fever, the rheu- 
matism which swelled and stiffened every joint — then the lassi. 
tude of utter weakness in which you could barely muster 
strength to answer necessary questions or to swallow necessary 
medicine. 

It was a toss-up as to whether you would die. You knew 
it, and you didn't care. 

Of all the phenomena of illness, that surprised you most. 
You looked Death in the face, and were not afraid. You sim- 
ply didn't care. 

Over the mantel was a picture of a schoolboy of twelve 
years, — school-book and school-bucket in hand, and a white 
wool hat on his head ; and in his freckled face the bold, frank, 
confident look of robust youth. 

During all the years and all the changes, you had cherished 
the little picture — a souvenir of days when the world was 
young to you, and none of the illusions was lost. 

Now that you were so very ill that even She grew pro- 
foundly anxious, you looked from the bed, waved a feeble 
hand at the little boy over the mantel, and whispered, "You 
haven't got much farther to go, little boy." 

But for Her, you didn't mind it, at all. She would grieve 
— you knew that — and for Her sake you would keep up the 
fight ; otherwise, it did not at all matter to you whether the 
long lane turned or not. For you had reached middle age, 
and the illusions were gone. Perhaps yours had been a hard 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 29 

life— unusually hard. Perhaps, in everything which you had 
undertaken, it had cost you twice as much toil and persistence 
to succeed as it had seemed to cost other men. 

Perhaps, you had come to realize that you were one of 
those men with whom P'ortune deals jjrudgingly, one of thpse 
whom Hope deceives and Success laughs at; one of those who 
always has wind and wave against him. and who never by any 
sort of chance finds himself in league with Luck. 

It may have been that when you were a boy you read too 
much, thought more soberly than most boys do, and dreamed 
dreams of the future. It may have been the ambition of your 
life to work manfully until you could possess a competence 
and then, made independent of Poverty, to devote every talent 
and energy to the service of your country. 

Public life allured you. To be a Tribune of the People, 
leading them upward and onward, cheered by their applause, 
made happy by the blessings of those whom your life-work 
elevated and benefitted, seemed to you the noblest task you 
could undertake. 

To prepare for it, you became a lawyer. In no other pro- 
fession could you hope" to earn an income so quickly and so 
surely. You iDuried yourself in books. The midnight lamp 
never failed to find you at study. Year in and year out, you 
worked by day and studied by night. 

You began with pitifully small fees. Often you i-ode all 
day, to and from Justices' Courts, to earn the half of five dol- 
lars. The entire labor of your first year at the Bar gained 
you but two hundred and twelve dollars. You lived in the 
country, ate a cold dinner which you had brought to your office 
with you, and waited for clients — eager for work. 

Year after year passed. So wrapped up were you in study, 
labor, anxiety, ambition, that fireside pleasures were almost 
unknown to you, and you lost — ah, the sadness of it now !-^ 
the holy joys of home life with your children while they were 
still children. 

Ten years passed — then three more ; and then the goal was 
reached. You were safe. You had gained a competence. 
. Fear of Poverty would trouble you no more. 

You closed your office, went before the people, explained 
the principles which formed your creed, and asked to be 
elected as their Representative in the national councils. 

Court-house rings, town cliques, professional wire-pullers 
were all against you ; but you went into the country precincts, 
you spoke to the people in the village streets, at the country 
school-grounds, at the crossroad-stores. Wherever fifteen or 
twenty would assemble, there you would speak to them. 



30 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



The politicians laughed at you; but when your opponent 
came home from Washington to meetl you in debate before the 
mass-meetings throughout the district, lo ! the people were with 
you, and your triumph at the polls was unprecedented in your 
State. 

Your political party, which in convention after convention 




'a picture of a school boy "■ ^ 
school-book and school-bucket 

IX HAND."' 



had adopted your platform, suddenly changed front and 
denounced those principles. 

What were you to do? 

You decided that prhu-iples were dearer than parti/, and 
you stood by your prinicples. 

The people of your district indorsed you — nine counties 
out of eleven giving you overwhelming majorities. In the 
other two counties, the swindlers who had charge of the ballot- 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 31 

boxes simply stuffed them with ballots enough to beat you ; and 
so the people were robbed of representation. 

As to you, the dream of your boyhood was at an end. 

The object aimed at, in thirteen years of steady, life-absorb- 
ing toil, was forever put beyond your reach. 

It was hard, wasn't it 1 

You tried again, at another election. The result was the 
same. Once more you tried. Result, as before. You appealed 
to Congress. Both political parties hated you and your creed. 
Both voted to bar you out'. 

You asked for a hearing on the floor of the House. It was 
denied you— for the first time in the history of your country. 

Then, exhausted and disheartened, you quit the hopeless 
contest. Your enemies shouted with great joy, and amid bon- 
fires and street parades, you were burned in effigy — a disgraced 
and ruined man. 

You almost wished that you were dead. How near vou 
came to losing your reason and your life, in the bitter grief of 
that crushing disappointment — She knows — She, only. 

Then you shut the world out of your life ; buried yourself 
to all but the very few; called around you the serene com- 
panionship of Great Authors, breathed the atmosphere of the 
past ; entered into the lives, the hopes, the struggles, the suffer- 
ings of the sublime reformers to whose courage and sacrifice 
we owe all that makes the world tolerable — all that gives us 
liberty of person, of conscience, of speech. 

And then, full of the inspiration drawn from the lives of 
these grand pioneers of human progress, you reached out for 
the long-idle pen, and you wrote. 

Ah, how your heart did forget its own troubles, in that 
work! You wrote, and wrote, and wrote — many a night till it 
seemed that you alone of all the world was awake ; the pen all 
too slow to follow the burning thought. Many a time, you 
reeled with fatigue as you rose from the desk where six hours 
or eight, of whose flight you had been unconscious, had sped; 
many a time, the page was blotted with tears, and you could 
not go on. 

Always, always, your soul was in the pen, and you wrote no 
word that did not come from the heart. 

At length the task was finished, and your book (blue- 
penciled horribly by a critic who was afterward adjudged a 
lunatic) came forth. 

What really had you hoped? 

Had you dared to believe that the world would be fair to 
any book bearing your discredited name? 

Had you faintly breathed some pathetic prayer, that the 



32 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



fierce abuse which had beat upon you as a political leader 
might spare your book? 

Poor fool, you! 

Political hatred, like religious bigotry, never forgets and 
never forgives. 

The very college professors who had examined your manu- 
script for tiie publishers ; and who had, in writing, pronounced 
your history "the greatest since Macaulay," caught the conta- 
gion of attack; and they assailed you as savagely in the re- 
views, as though vou were a cross between Jack Cade and 




THE LOO SCHOOL HOUSE IN SCREVEN CO., GA., 
WHERE MR. WATSON TAUGHT SCHOOL. 



Marat. Your book was damned — incontinently, successfully, 
eternally damned. 

But you must needs try again. Perhaps you would have 
better luck next time. 

So once more it was toil at the desk; once more there was 
the rapture of composition; once more the long, shining lines 
of thought swept l)efore your mental vision, and you were 
caught up into and swept away by the ecstacy of creative com- 
position. 

Surely the world would be interested this time; surelv the 
work and the workman would be recognized, appreciated. Not 
so. The world had no more of welcome for the second book 
than for the first. Yet you tried once more. The third failed 
like the second ; and a fourth completed the melancholy list. 

Then you thought it time to quit, and you quit — swallow- 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 33 

ing as b€st you could the bitter pill of failure, and the pangs 
of unconditional surrender. 

What was left ? 

Could you try your hand at anything else? 

Oh, yes, you could go to work and make more money. And 
you did so. ^ It was the only thing you could do. With dis- 
gusting facility, you could heap thousand upon thousand. In 
the court-house, 3'ou could name your own fees; you could 
choose your own cases. On the lecture platform, you could 
name your own price, and you could earn as much or as little 
as you would. 

Four or five years passed; and the one thing of which you 
had enough was, money. 

But the old hunger gnawed at your heart. You were not 
happy. You longed to do something worthier of what was 
best in your nature. You longed to fight a good fight for 
justice, for better law^s, for beneficent institutions, for con- 
ditions that are more equitable, for a fairer distribution of the 
bounties and blessings of nature and human industry. You 
scorned the mere getting of money. You wanted to be useful, 
to be a power for good, to be a leader of public opinion, to the 
end that the best principles and the best ideals might prevail. 

You especially wanted to reach the young; and to lay your 
hands gently upon the lines of their thought and conviction, so 
that, long after you were gone from earth, you would live, in 
the patriotic endeavor of men irhosee'fforts for gooS might he 
happier than your own. 

So once more you take up the pen. 

And it so happens that, in the very midst of this new 
ambition and new work, disease strikes you down. 

No wonder you grow weary. No wonder you feel indif- 
ferent. 

The way has been long, and it has been rugged, and at last 
you are tired. 

You look, just a little contemptuously, in the very face of 
Death, and you say in your thought — "I'm sure to be vours 
sooner or later; take me n-ow, if you like." 

And, to the little boy on the mantel, you lift you eyes and 
whisper, with a half-mocking smile, ''•'■Not m.ueh farther now. 
little hoy.''"' 

Yes; it all depended upon whether the inflammation would 
extend. You knew that well enough ; and when the nurse 
applied hot cloth after hot cloth, hour after hour, for twelve 
hours, you knew what it meant. It was a pitched battle be- 
tween Death and the nurse. 

Well, the nurse won. 



34 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

The fever and pain stood at bay ; the exhausted nurse stag- 
gered off to take her rest; and when morning broke, you knew 
that you would g-et well. 

Were you glad? Not particularly so. Just what you had 
to live for, was not so clear to you as it used to be. 

You came back to life without regret, and without enthu- 
siasm. 

The song of the birds is sweet, but not sweeter than before. 
The rustle of the wind in the trees, the breath of the flowers, 
the lazy beauty of the distant landscape, the splendor of sum- 
mer evening, sunsets, and rising moons — all these are glorious 
to you, but not more so than they ever were. 

Convalescent ? Yes, convalescent. On Her account you are 
glad. She would have missed you. 

As for the rest of it — the horse is back in the treadmill, and 
the dull plodding around the circle goes on as before. 



Glimpses Behind the Curtain 

/^F history one may grow tired, but who does not find peren- 
^^ nial interest in piquant Memoirs and chatty biographies* 

History was ever too stilted to pick up trifles, and yet 
trifles are often priceless, for they reveal hidden causes and 
unlock the mysteries of events and of character. 

History passes along the highway with pageantry, with 
imposing mein, formal stride and orderly procession. 

Branching off from this main historical thoroughfare, run 
the by-roads, the quiet lanes, the wandering trails of personal 
detail, of minor incident, of spicy anecdote, of subordinate 
episode that shed vivid sidelights upon that stately narra- 
tive which travels by the highroad. 

It may not be true that the course of time turned upon the 
length of Cleopatra's nose, or upon the grain of sand in Crom- 
well's ureter, as Blaise Paschal surmises: but there can be no 
doubt that a very trivial word, or fact, has often the appear- 
ance of being a necessary link in the chain of decisive events. 

The assassin who sprang upon the wheel of Henry the 
Fourth's carriage and thrust a dagger into a fatal spot, 
certainly changed the political situation of Europe: and it 
seems probable that the train of events which led up to the 
murder arose out of the fur}' of a woman scorned. 

The German Empire today is a mighty product of ambi- 
tion, ruthless perseverance, and unscrupulous valor: but had 
not the sudden death of the great Catherine taken the Russian 
armies out of the field, Prussia would perhaps have been parti- 
tioned, as Poland was, afterwards. 

There was a time when France wavered betw.een Catholi- 
cism and Protestantism: and the national faith of the na- 
tion hung upon the decision of one man. The woman who 
controlled Francis the First, at this crisis, fixed the destinies of 
the realm. 

And whoever the woman was, she, in turn, was putty in the 
hands of a priest. 

The Canadian empire was lost to France because Montcalm 
could not get supplies. And why cQuld he not get the means 
of defense? Because the scarlet woman of a libertine Bourbon 
king needed the money. There was not enough in the treasury 
for the soldiers and the courtiers, too: and therefore the cour- 



36 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

tiers, being on the ground, helped themselves, leaving the 
soldiers to suffer privations and the lack of necessary muni- 
tions of war. 

Edward Lacey, of South Carolina, rode eighty miles to 
warn the Mountaineer horsemen of the South not to take the 
wrong road; had his horse fallen with him, as he galloped, 
the warning might not have been given, and the battle of 
King's Mountain not fought. Without that victory, Corn- 
wallis would hardly have been forced to retreat upon York- 
town. 

* * * * * * 

But our purpose is not so much to show^ the influence of 
small events over large results as to emphasize their signifi- 
cance in revealing motive, giving insight into character, and 
modifying by personal detail the historical portraits of great 
men. 

The George Washington of the battle-field, of the council 
of war, of the Cabinet, of the parlor, and the public place, is 
sufficiently familiar to most Americans; and a grand histori- 
cal figure he is; but for my part I could not thoroughly 
understand him, or feel that he was human, like the rest of 
us, if Memoirs and biographies had not told us how he "cussed 
out" Gen. Chas. Lee on the field of Monmouth, swore at the 
prankish boy who was speeding his favorite horse, and broke 
the gun of the poacher whom he caught prowling in the Mt. 
Vernon marsh. 

Then when we find him laughing till he cries, as the Brit 
ish officer sang that funny, naughty song, and hear him call 
for it to be sung over again, we warm up to him mightily — 
he is behaving like a man and not like a. demi-god. 

Could we ever understand Henry Clay, if we confined our- 
selves to historical and partisan biography ? What do such 
booka tell us of the man? Mighty little. 

A "gentleman gambler" pretty much all of his life, a hard 
drinker for many years, profane and over-bearing, from first 
to last, yet warm-hearted, gallant, dashing, proud, fearless, 
and, withal, a very tricky, selfish, calculating politician, who 
did his country a vast deal of harm. 

Somebody asked Mrs. Clay if her husband's gambling did 
not worry and trouble her. 

"Oh, no." said she, "he most always wins." 

To see Henry Clay in the Senate, is to see personal dignity 
personified; go with him to a country dance, and you will hear 
him call for a reel, and when the ifiddlers do not happen to 
know the tune, he will whistle it to them until they learn it. 

Stanton in his "Random Recollections" tells this anecdote: 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 37 

'"111 the stormy days of John Tyler, while Webster was 
Secretary of State, and Riifus Choate was in the Senate, and 
Congress was in extra session in the Fall of 1841, the question 
of chartering United States bank was shaking the country. 
Mr. Clay, as chairman of the Finance Committee in the Senate, 
was pressing the measure, and Tyler was resisting it. A con- 
ference of leading Whig Senators was held. Clay, with lofty 
mein, was for waging relentless war on the accidental presi- 
dent, who had stepped into the White House over the dead 
body of General Harrison. Choate again and again told what 
Webster thought ought to be done. Clay was restive, and 
exclaimed, 'AVho cares a d — n about what W^ebster thinks?'" 

Henry A. Wise, in his ''Seven Decades," gives a graphic 
description of the manner in which Clay took the news of his 
defeat for the Whig nomination in 1840, 

"In the very hour of his defeat he was sitting in a room 
at Brown's Hotel, anxiously waiting to hear of his nomination. 
He made most singular exhibitions of himself in that moment 
of ardent expectancy. 

"He was open and exceedingly profane in his denunciation 
of the intriguers against his nomination. We had taken two 
Whig friends of our district to see him; and after they had 
sat some time listening to him, in utter surprise at his remarks, 
full of the most impudent, coarse crimination of others, in 
words befitting only a barroom in vulgar broil, of a sudden 
he stopped, and turning to the two gentlemen, who were 
dressed in black and both strangers to him, he said, 'But, 
gentlemen, for aught I know, from your cloth you may be 
parsons, and shocked at my words. Let us take a glass of 
wine!' and rising from his seat, he walked to a well-loaded 
side-board, at which, evidently, he had been imbibing deeply 
before we entered, 

"Thereupon we bowed and took leave. One of the gentle- 
men, after retiring, remarked, 'That man can never be my 
political idol again;' and from that time to this he has ceased 
to admire him. In a short time after that he (Mr. Clay) went 
across the avenue to the parlor of his boarding house, where 
he awaited the arrival of his two personal friends, on the 
night of the nomination at Harrisburg, to bring him the news 
of the final proceedings and choice of the Whig Convention, 

"We went to the depot and got the intelligence of the nom- 
ination of General Harrison and Mr. Tyler, and hastened 
back to him with the news. Such an exhibition we never 
witnessed before, and we pray never again to witness such 
an exhibition of passion, such a storm of desperation and 



38 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

curses. He rose from his chair, and, walking backwards and 
forwards rapidly, lifting his feet like a horse string-halted 
m both legs, stamped his steps upon the floor, exclaiming, 
'My friends are not worth the powder and shot it would 
take to kill them I" He mentioned the names of several, in- 
voking upon them the most horrid imprecations, and then, 
turning to us, approached rapidly, and stopping before us, 
with violent gesture and loud voice, said. "If there were two 
Henrv Clays, one of them would make the other President 
of the United States.' " 

* * * * * * 

In the ''Memoirs of One Hundred Years,'' Dr. Edward 
Everett Hale labors to remove the impression that Daniel 
Webster got drunk. In the innocence of his noble heart, Dr. 
Hale states that he saAv much of Webster, and that he never 
saw him drunk. 

Alas ! he did g<ii drunk, nevertheless. And he had little 
idea of honor m financial matters; and it icas disgraceful for 
him to pocket, annually, the pension contributed by those New 
England capitalists whose interests he was furthering in Con- 
gress. The Senator who would now openly do such a thing 
Avould be ostracised. Senators still receive pay from the spe- 
cial interests which they slavishly serve, but the bribery does 
not, nowadays, take the form of a yearly pension. 

Ben Perley Poore in his "Reminiscences" relates: 

"An amusing account has been given of an after-dinner 
speech by Mr. Webster at a gathering of his political friends, 
when hej had to be prompted by a friend Avho sat just behind 
him, and gave him successively phrases and topics. The 
speech proceeded somewhat after this fashion : Prompter : 
'Tariff.' Webster: 'The tariff, gentlemen, is a subject re- 
quiring the profound attention of the statesman. American 
industry, gentlemen, must be — (nods a little). Prompter: 
'National Debt.' Webster: 'And, gentlemen, there's the na- 
tional debt — it should be paid (loud cheers, Avhich rouse the 
speaker) ; yes, gentlemen, it should be paid (cheers), and I'll 
be hanged if it shan't be (taking out his pocketbook) ; I'll 
pay it myself. How much is it?' This last question was asked 
of a gentleman near him with drunken seriousness, and, 
coupled with the recollection of the well-known impecuniosity 
of Webster's pocketbook. it excited roars of laughter, amidst 
which the orator sank into his seat and was soon asleep." 

* v * * * * 

Perhaps the vainest, most pompous of all our public men 
was Thomas H. Benton. His conceit was colossal. In fact, it 



PROSE MISCELLANIES, 39 

was so majestic and overpowering that, as one of his biogra- 
phers says, it assumed the proportion of a national institution. 
Mr. Eooseveh Avrote a "Life'" of Benton in 1S86. too soon to 
make use of this delicious anecdote which Mrs. Clement C. 
Clav relates in her charming book. ''A Belle of the Fifties," 
published by I). Appleton & Co., in 1905: 

"A handsome man in ordinary attire, the great old author 
and statesman was yet a more striking figure when mounted. 
He rode with a stately dignity, quite unlike the pace indulged 
in by some other equestrians of that city and day : a day, it 
may be said in passiog, when equestrianism was common. Mr. 
Benton's appearance and the slow gait of his horse impressed 
me as powerful and even majestic, and often (as I remarked 
to him at dinner one evening) there flashed through my mind, 
as I saw him, a remembrance of Byron's Moorish king as he 
rode benignly through the streets of Granada. He seemed 
gratified at my comparison. 

" 'I'm glad you approve of my pace,' he said. 'I ride 
slowly because I do not wish to be confounded with post- 
boys and messengers sent in haste for the surgeon. They may 
gallop if they will, hut not Senarors/'' 

Oh. heavens I What would the Honorable Tom have 
thought of {f President (Roosevelt) who rushed away from a 
Cabinet meeting to gallop, leap the bars, etc., while the camera 
man made snapshots at the Presidential horsemanship? 

^ ^ ■S^l ^ ^ :Sf 

That brilliant, outrageous scold, John Randolph, of Roan- 
oke, is always interesting, but much more so in the Memoirs 
than in the histories. Here is the way Ben Perley Poor de- 
scribes him : 

"He used to enter the Senate Chamber wearing a pair of 
silver spurs, carrying a heavy riding whip, and followed by a 
favorite hound, which crouched beneath his desk. He wrote, 
and occasionally spoke, in riding gloves, and it was his favorite 
gesture to point the long index finger of his right hand at his 
opponent as he hurled forth tropes and figures of speech at 
him. Every ten or fifteen minutes, while he occupied the floor, 
he would exclaim in a low tone: 'Tims, more porter I" and the 
assistant doorkeeper would hand him a foaming tumbler of 
potent malt liquor, which he would hurriedly drink, and then 
proceed with his remarks, often thus drinking three or four 
quarts in an afternoon. He Avas not choice in his selection of 
epithets, and as Mr. Calhoun took the ground that he did not 
have the power to call .a Senator to order, the irate Virginian 
pronounced President Adams 'a traitor,' Daniel Webster 'a 
vile slanderer,' John Holmes 'a dangerous fool,' and Edward 



40 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

Livingston 'the most contemptible and degraded of beings, 
whom no man ought to touch, unless with a pair of tongs.' 
One day, while he was speaking with great freedom of abuse 
of Mr. Webster, then a member of the House, a Senator in- 
formed him in an undertone that Mi's. Webster was in the 
gallery. He had not the delicacy to desist, however, until he 
had fully emptied the vials of his wrath. Then he set upon 
Mr. Speaker Taylor, and after abusing him soundly he turned 
sarcastically to the gentleman who informed him of Mrs. 
Webster's presence, and asked, 'Ig Mrs. Taylor present also?' " 
****** 

Do you admire Charles Sumner? He was a great scholar, 
a great orator, and the histories do him full justice. If you 
would see into the nature of the man^ you must dip into Col. 
Pond's book, "The Eccentricities of Genius": 

"Charles Sumner was an aristocrat. He was my father's 
ideal. After I had got back from Kansas, and visited my 
father's home in Wisconsin, father said to me: 'James, the 
Honorable Charles Sumner is going to speak at R — . We 
must hear him.' 

"So we arranged to go. We walked nine miles to hear him 
speak. My father never spoke of him without giving him his 
title. He had enjoyed that speech immensely. I do not know 
whetheri I did or not. Father occupied a front seat with the 
intention of rushing up to the platform and greeting him by 
the hand when he was finished, but the Honorable Charles was 
too quick for him. He disappeared, got to his hotel, and 
nobody saw him, 

"Father said: 'James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is 
going to Milwaukee tomorrow morning, and we can ride with 
him a part of the way.' 

"We were on the train early the next morning, and so M^as 
the Honorable Charles Sumner. He was sitting reading in 
the drawing-room car, 

"Father stepped up and said: 'The Honorable Charles 
Sumner? I have read all of your speeches. I feel it is the 
duty of every American to take you by the hand. This is my 
son. He has just returned from the Kansas conflict,' 

"Honorable Charles Sumner did not see father nor his son, 
but he saw the porter and said: 'Can you get me a place 
where I will be undistuf-bed?' 

"Poor father ! His heart was almost broken. During his 
last twenty-five years he never referred to the Honorable 
Charles Sumner." 

****** 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 41 

In the enjoyment of Memoirs and Reminiscences you must 
not be lulled into the error of indiscriminate credulity. You 
must sort and sift and compare authorities, and thus out of 
much conflict of testimony arrive at a just conclusion. For 
example, take this story which we find in the Reminiscences 
of Ben Perley Poore: 

"General Grant was very positive in demanding that all 
officers of the Confederate army should enjoy their liberty. 
Among those of them who had been imprisoned by order of 
the Secretary of AVar was General Clement C. Clay, an ex- 
United States Senator from Alabama. He was taken ill in 
prison with asthma, and his wife came to Washington to solicit 
his release. She went to President Johnson, and he gave her 
the necessary order, which she took to Secretary Stanton. 
Stanton read the order, and looked her in the face, tore it up 
without a word and pitched it into his waste-basket. The lady 
rose and retired without speaking: nor did Stanton speak to 
her. She was filled with despair. She saw her husband, in 
whom her life was wrapped up, dying in prison, and she was 
unable to help him. 

Soon afterwards she was advised to call on General Grant, 
who ascertained by consulting his roster of the Confederate 
Army that her husband was a Brigadier-General, then wrote 
an order directing his release, under the Appomattox parole 
on giving the required bond, and added : 'I shall see that this 
order is carried out.' Having signed the order, he gave it to 
Mrs. Clay, who the next day presented it to the Secretary of 
War. Mr. Stanton read it. then touched his bell, and when an 
officer appeared, handed him the order, saying: 'Have this 
man discharged.' " 

That sounds veracious, and the facts stated do faithfully 
illustrate the character of the persons concerned. But the 
story is not true. If you will read what Mrs. Clay herself 
says about it, in "A Belle of the Fifties," you will learn that 
the order of President Johnson was respected, and that she 
herself telegraphed the release to Fortress Monroe that night. 
General Clay was liberated even previous to the arrival of the 
formal order, and General Grant's powerful aid was not in- 
voked at all. It is true that Stanton did urge the President 
to have ex-President Davis and General Clay put to death, 
and he would not countersign the order of release, but he did 
not tear up the order. 

****** 

Does history tell you anything about the manner in which 
the great Marlborough stood behind the chair of the petty 



42 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

Prussian King, acting as a menial, and protesting that the 
honor of doing so was too great for him? No; history is too 
dignified to notice triHes like that; and yet this adroit flattery 
had a mighty influence upon the course of events. The Prus- 
sian King Avas so captivated by the humility of the English 
General that he granted the Englishman's plea for the use of 
Prussia s fine troops in the war against France ! 

•Can you believe that the Duke of AVellington would have 
been equally complaisant to gain his point? 

Read what Sir F. H. Doyle says in his '•'Reminiscences:"' 
"I recollect hearing from my father an anecdote told him 
by the Duke himself, in his oAvn characteristic language, one 
day when he was dining at Apsley House. We learn from 
it, with what contemptuous indifl'erence this great man pushed 
aside all considerations of personal dignity — false personal 
dignity, as he thought it — if they stood in the way of his duty 
to England. 'After the battle of Talavera,' he said^ 'I wanted 
the Spanish force to make a movement, and called upon Cuesta 
to take the necessary steps, but he demurred. He said, by way 
of answer. 'For the honor of the Spanish crown I cannot attend 
to the directions of the British General, unless the British 
General go upon his knees and entreat me to follow his advice.' 
'Now,' proceeded the Duke, 'I wanted the thing done, while as 
to going down upon my knees I did not care a two-penny 
d — n, so down I plumped.' " 

::= * * * H: * 

You know all about Martin Luther, don't you? The his- 
tories are full of him and his great work, the Reformation. 

But if you would know the mental state of Luther, and 
that of the leading men of his time, you should read his 
"Table Talk." One or two paragraphs will go far toward 
showing you the vast difference betAveen the current beliefs 
among learned men of that day, and ours: 

''There was at Nieiiburg a magician named Wildferer, who, 
one day, swalloAved a countryman, with his» horse and cart. A 
few hours afterwards, man, horse, and cart, Avere all found in 
the slough, some miles off'. I heard, too, of a seeming monk 
Avho asked a Avagoner that Avas taking some hay to market, hoAv 
much he Avould charge to let him eat his fill of hay? The man 
said, a kreutzer, Avhereupon the monk set to Avork and had 
nearly deA^oured the Avhole load, when the Avagoner drove 
him off*.'' 

August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon Avitches Avho 
spoil milk, eggs and butter in farmyards. Dr. Luther said: 
'•I should have compassion on these Avitches; I would burn all 
vi them. We read in the old law that the priests threw the 



^ PROSE MISCELLANIES. 43 

first stone at such malefactors. Tis said this stolen butter 
turns rancid, and falls to the ground when anyone goes to 
eat it.'' 

Dr. Luther discoursed at length concerning witchcraft and 
charms. He said that his mother had to undergo infinite an- 
no^yance from one of her neighbors, who was a witch, and 
whom she was fain to conciliate with all sorts of attentions; 
for this Avitch could throw a charm upon children, which made 
them cry themselves to death. A pastor having punished her 
for some knavery, she cast a spell upon him bj^ means of some 
earth upon which he had walked and which she bewitched. 
The poor man hereupon fell sick of a malady which no remedy 
could remove, and shortlv afterwards died. 



Of course you have read Boswell's Johnson, or Macaulay's 
famous Essay, but here is an anecdote which illustrates the 
learned Doctor and his times so perfectl}' that it is worth pres- 
ervation. It is found in Eae's "Wilkes, Sheridan and Fox." 

''The King's early aversion to Fox was intensified after 
the latter became the champion of Dissenters. In those days 
the intolerance of Churchmen towards their fellow-Protest- 
ants, who conscientiously differed from them in particular 
opinions, was alike extraordinary and discreditable. It was 
glorified in as a species of loyalty. The forms under which it 
appeared were innumerable. This is one witnessed by Lord 
Eldon during a visit to Oxford : 'I had a walk in New Inn 
Hall garden, with Dr. Johnson, Sir Robert Chambers, and 
some other gentlemen. Sir Robert Avas gathering snails, and 
throwing them over the wall into his neighbor's garden. The 
Doctor reproached him very roughly, and stated to him that 
this was unmannerly and unneighborly. 'Sir,' said Sir Robert, 
'my neighbor is a Dissenter." 'Oh,' said the Doctor, 'if so, 
Chambers, toss away, toss away, as hard as you can.' " 

Sometimes when you Avould like to study a really great 
speech — you Avho see so many in print that are not great — 
turn to Henry Grattan's speech on Tithes. Fewi English ora- 
tions equal this and none surpass it in the perfect mastering 
of the subject. Grattan was gifted Avith a higher order of 
intellect, culture and oratory than any of the Irish tribunes, 
and in character he soared aboA^e fliem all. Unselfish, conse- 
crated to his country, he was altogether a higher type than 
Curran, and more heroic than O'Connell. 

For many years he was prince ai orators in the , British 



44 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

Parliament, after having been the bright particular star of 
the Parliament of Ireland. 

This much, the histories will tell you: but if you would 
know how it all ended, you must go down the lane to Memoirs. 

"The old statesman lingered upon the stage too long, and 
one night when he rose in his place and addressed 'Mr. 
Speaker!' he rambled in his speech, grew tiresome, and lost 
the ear of the House. Members began to cough. In Parlia- 
ment the tiresome orator is 'coughed down.' 

"As the coughing grew in volume, old Grattan stopped. 
His face fell and his voice changed. He said to the Speaker, 
'I believe, sir, they are right,' and sat down." 

We find this touching incident in Crabbe Robinson's 
"Diary." 



Not Quite 



"[^EVEK shall this pen, or any other, put into words the full 
■^^ glory of the message. 

No artist's brush ever conveyed to canvass the painter's 
fairest dream. 

No chisel ever made perfect in marble the vision as it ap- 
peared to the sculptor's brain. 

Musician ! — were they not beyond the power of your eager 
hands to catch and hold — those diviner harmonies that lifted 
your soul to the seventh heaven? 

Orator! — did tongue or spoken word ever give to the en- 
tranced hearer those strains of unuttered eloquence that stirred 
your very soul in the solitude of your room in the hush of the 
night ? 

Not quite, is the Work equal to the Conception: always 
there remains something unattainable. 

Strive as we may, something escapes us. 

One day a friend of Thorwalsden, dropping into the Sculp- 
tor's studio, found him sad. Asked what was the cause of 
his melancholy, Thorwalsden replied: 

"My genius is gone. Heretofore, when I tried to work out 
a Conception, the statue was never up to the Ideal. But now 
this statue of Christ, which I have just finished, satisfies me, 
and I know that I shall never have another great Conception." 

Oh, if it were but possible for one to dwell, always in those 
upper regions of pure thoughts and noble aspirations ! 

I care nothing for Butler's Analogy, nor any other ponder- 
ous book which strives to prove, by external evidence, that 
there is a God. 

What better proof do I want than that somewhere, in some 
form, there lives a fower which sends thrills of happiness 
through me — emotions that shake eveiy fibre of my being, as 
the breezes shake "the aspen leaves — when I have done a good 
deed? 

Don't try, frOTn without^ to convince me that there is a 
Supreme Being, of some sort, who will in some mysterious 
way sift the Eight from the Wrong, the True from the False. 

There is nothing in the outside order of things that will 
make out your case. You are born into the world, as other 
animals are; vou live or vou die, as other animals live or die: 



46 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

and Nature — remorseless, inscrutable, irresistible monster that 
she is! — takes no more account cf the best man on earth than 
of the worst. 

Nature executes the law ; woe unto you if you violate it ! 

Nature has no ear for the plea of the weak, no heart to be 
touched by human misery. 

Nature slays a million human beings with Famine. Pes- 
tilence, Earthquakes, Sea-storms, freezing blasts of winter — 
as remorselessly as she kills germs, flies and gnats. 

Listen : 

A few years ago, a little girl lay in the agonies of Menin- 
gitis at Belle vue Hospital, New York. 

The doctor was so keenly anxious about her, so bravely 
devoted to his' task of saving her life if he could, that he hung 
over her bedside night and day. 

At length, the crisis was safely met and the little girl com- 
menced her journey back to health. 

Overflowing with gratitude and joy, the little thing clasped 
her arms about the doctor's neck and kissed him. 

And the embrace cost him his life. 

For in her impulsive hug, her almost hysterical delight, 
the little girl's finger-nail gave the doctor a slight scratch on 
the neck. 

Blood-poisoning set in, and. as the little girl came back to 
light and life, the heroic doctor was on his way down the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

If Nature had a heart that was softer than granite, would 
she ever let a thing like that come to pass? 

Such things happen at every tick of the clock. 

Nature doesn't care. 

Nature draws no distinction between the assassin and his 
victim; none between the beggar and the millionaire; none 
between the negro rapist and the white girl struggling, fi'an- 
tically and vamly, to escape a fate worse than death. 

Nature looks on, with eyes that see nothing; Nature works 
on, with ears that hear nothing. 

Therefore, you search in vain the outside world to find your 
proofs that a Supreme Being, of henefcent intent, exists. 

If you cannot prove it from within, you are lost. 

And if you cannot prove it by that feeling of content, of 
joy, of happiness that glows within you after you have said the 
Good Word, after you have done the Good Deed — you cannot 
prove it at all. 

No matter how much Faith you may have, you haven't any 
other proof. 



v^ 



^ 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 47 



Not quite, can the painter's art transfer to canvass the 
beautiful scene which dwells in his mind. 

Then, whence came that beauty which is too perfect to be 
reproduced by human skill? 

Not quite, can the great composer put into melodious notes 
those harmonies that enraptured his soul. 

Then whence came those harmonies, those celestial airs 
which inspired,, yet somewhat eluded, the divine genius of 
Handel and Beethoven and Schubert and Mozart? 

Not quite, can the speaker or writer catch and cage, in 
spoken or written word, those sublime thoughts which came 
into his solitude, when all the outer world was still, and lifted 
his soul into a higher, purer, lovelier, diviner world. 

Then whence came those thoughts which carried him to 
the mountain top, and bade him look down upon all the world 
below ? 

From within, comes the conviction that there must be some- 
where a loftier life that we poor imperfect creatures can live; 
and that somewhere there is perfect Beauty, perfect Melody, 
perfect Truth, and perfect Good. 

From some better world, must come these better things. 

Some day, it may be that the Angel of Beauty, which has 
so long inspired the artist, will whisper to him, "Put the brush 
away. Turn the canvass to the wall. Come with me." And 
that which is best in him will be glad td go. 

Some day, it may be that the Spirit of Music which has 
been the companion soul of the composer will say, "Sister 
spirit ! Come away." And the twin souls will seek together 
the world in which there is no discordant sound. 

Some night, the radiant thought that visits me here in my 
solitude, may say to me — 

"It is finished — Come." And that which is best in me will 
be glad to go. 



.^' 



How I Came to Write a Life of 
Napoleon 

The Hon. John Lawson Burnett of Gadsden^ Ala., has for 
several terms represented the Seventh Distnct in Congress. 
He is a Democrat. 

The month of August, 190j, found Mr. Burnett traveling in 
Europe. From, London, England, under date of August 20, 
the Alabama Congressman wrote a letter to the editor of the 
Gadsden Daily Times-News. 

After telling of Hamhurg, Bremen, Rotterdam, The Hague, 
and Antwerp, Mr. Burnett proceeds as follows: 

'■'■From Antwerp we loent to Brussels, the beautiful capital 
of Belgium, where we stayed a couple of days. Near here, the 
battle of Waterloo, which sealed the destiny of Napoleon, was 
fought. This brings up another school boy speech that I used 
to recite: 

" ''There was a sound of revelry by night. 

And Belgium)s capital was gathered there,'' etc. 

'■''This was the ball which was going on at Binissels when 
the battle began which sent Napoleon an exile to St., Helena, 
and changed the whole history of Europe. We visited the cele- 
brated battlefield. A magnificent harvest of wheat was being 
gathered, in the very fields which were watered by the) best) 
blood of Europe. The English have erected an immense Tnonu- 
ment there^ capped by a large figure of the British lion. This 
is ascended by 226 steps. You know I am fat and short- 
winded, and I started up, having no idect of going to the top. 
But the scene was so inspiring, and the air so exhilarating that 
I kept on till I got to the top. As I stood there and gazed over 
the ground which once resounded to the tramp of the greatest 
armies that Europe ever saw, I could but join in the question 
asked by Tom Watson of Georgia, '■What would have happened 
if Napoleon had wonf 

'■'■By the way, that reminds me that I went into a book store 
in Paris the other day and asked for the best histori/ of Napo- 
leon which they had in English^ and they handed, me Tom 
Watson's. I was rather proud of this compliment to our dis- 
tinguished Southern atithor, for., although J do not agree loith 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 49 

Mr. Watson in some things, I regard Jiim as one of the best 
writers in America. But this is another digression. I picked 
up a jew gravels fronM Waterloo because I had just received a 
letter from a young lady in my district, asking me to hHng her 
a pehhle from the ocean or some other little souvenir of mA^^ 
trip to Europe. So I thought she might app-reciate one of 
these. 

'■'■From Brussels we went to Pans, the most immortal city in 
the world. Here I will leave you till next week. Your friend, 

''JOHN L. BURNETT:' 

— Extract from published letter of Congressman John L. 
Burnett, of Gadsden, Alabama. Date August 20, 1907. Lon- 
don, England. 

np HE prolific novelist, F. Marion Crawford, came to Augusta, 
-■■ Georgia, some years ago, and lectured on the subject, 
"How I came to write 'Mr. Isaacs.' " By the audience, it was 
considered a mighty poor lecture. Not many present had 
ever heard of '*Mr. Isaacs;" and even these few cared nothing 
about how Mr. Crawford came to write the book. The novel, 
to them, was just a novel, and it was nothing more. There- 
fore, when Mr. Crawford spent an hour regaling the house 
with an account of the way in which "Mr. Isaacs'' happened 
to happen, his hearers were dreadfully bored. Since thait 
time Augusta, Georgia, has called for lecturers from all quar- 
ters of the earth, but she has never wanted any more of F. 
Marion Crawford. Once, was a plenty. 

It has always seemed to me a striking proof of how a man 
can make a huge mistake about his own rating, or the rating of 
his books, that so sensible a person as F, Marion Crawford 
should have assumed that an average lecture-hall audience 
would care two straws about how he came to write "Mr. 
Isaacs." 

If it had been Charles Eeade, explaining how he came to 
write "The Cloister and the Hearth," that would have made a 
difference. 

Of course, I ought to take warning by what happened to 
F. Marion — but who pays any heed to warnmgs? Does the 
burnt child dread the fire, until after he gets blistered? No, 
indeed. Each of us quits playing with edged tools, after we 
get cut — not before. 

The negro who tearfully assured his boss that he had been 
"sorry 'bout stealing dem chickens — eber since I got cotched," 
came much nearer a universal truth than he could have sup- 
posed. 



50 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



So, with reckless disreg-ard of what befell F. Marion Craw- 
ford, when he took it into his head that the people of Augusta 
would reflect cheerfully over the entrance fee of one dollar 
apiece. Avhen they were given, in return, a full explanation of 
how a novelist came to write a novel — I am going to stumble 




"when he wrote prize essays, which did not take prizes, 

* "^ I WAS IN sympathy WITH HIM.*' 



headlong into the same mistake; after which I will know 
better than to do it again. 

The one decided advantage which I have over F. Marion 
Crawford, in presuming to tell hoAv one of my books came to 
be written, is, that no one has to pay a dollar to read or listen. 

It seems to me, that there never was a time when Napoleon 
was not a part of my life and my thought. Before I knew 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. -1 

anythinfr of George Washington, I knew as much of Bona- 
parte as' the Eeverend John S. C. Abbott eonkl tell me. At 
the time I first read the bulky volumes of the hero-worshipping 
author, the books were almost as heavy as I was ; and I knew 
no better than to devour that marvelous romance, wj^h all of a 
boy's eager delimit and unquestioning faith. The Reverend 
Mr Abbott- mav'have staggered the wise, but he did not stag- 
ger' me. I believed it alL Had another boy, not appreciably 
hiro-er than mvself, scouted the unalloyed goodness of Napo- 
leon, the unsullied virtue of Josephine, and the unrelieved 
depravity of Napoleon's foes, there would have ensued imme- 
diately ill small but interesting case of assault and battery. 

The day when mv grandfather gave me the Abbott volumes, 
was an epoch in mv life. I was thrilled with joy and pride 
How easily I could paint the picture of that little incident, it 
I were an artist. My grandfather— tall, venerable, imposing, 
stricken already with palsy, and muttering something to me 
as he handed me down the books from the tall, yellow desk, 
surmounted bv book shelves, earnestly muttering and mum- 
bling words which I tried my best to understand, but could 

not. 1111 

Leaning heavilv upon his silver-headed cane, he looked 
steadily down at me, apparently repeating time after time 
what he wished to say, until I glanced timidly toward my 
grandmother, who sat quietly knitting by the fireside: and she 
came to my relief by telling me what my grandfather had said. 
How the scene all comes back, clear in every detail, though the 
mists of forty-one years have gathered about it. I then was 
' only nine years old. ''going on ten.'' 

Not a man of many books, was my grandfather. A slave- 
holder of the old Southern regime, his energies had gone out 
to practical affairs, and his heart was set upon his broad acres, 
well filled barns, his flocks, his herds, his big, fat mules, his 
well clothed, well fed, well housed, earnestly worked slaves. 
He had fought the battle of life in the neighborhood, where 
his ancestors, from the earliest Colonial times, had fought it; 
and he had won it, even as they had done. Not greatly ambi- 
tious, they were satisfied if they kept "even with the world," 
and abreast of their prosperous neighbors; and this meant that 
they owned good farms, a comfortable supply of negroes and 
other chattels, owed money to nobody and could lend a friend 
a few hundred dollars, now and then; or lose that much, 
"without feeling it,'' on a horse race, a cock fight, or a friendly 
game of cards. 

In the book called "Bethany," I endeavored to picture this 



52 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

old plantation life, just as it was. Xever en earth did negroes 
talk as those elegant colored gentlemen and ladies hold forth 
in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or Opie Reed's "My Young Master." 
The negro there pictured, bears the same resemblance to the 
real negto that the Indian of Cooper's novels bears to the real 
Indian. Even Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson 
Page have looked from the very best point o'f view upon 
the very best type of the race, until they have evolved an 
ethereal slave who was aW kindness, intelligence, fidelity, grati- 




NAPOLEON. 

tude, humor, humility, and pathetic fondness for his white 
master. No such negro ever lived. Folks of that type may 
be plentiful in heaven ; they do not exist on earth. 

My grandfather prided himself on the fine appearance of 
his slaves. They were treated well, upon the same principle 
that the horses were amply fed. It was to his interest to do 
it, and he did it. None of them was neglected in sickness, or 
old age; none was severely whipped; all were made to do a 
fair day's work: and all of them were better fed, better 
clothed and better housed than they have ever been since. The 
overseer punished no slave without my grandfather's approval, 
and that was rarely given. There was no occasion for bar- 



PRO&E MISCELLANIES. 53 

barity, and there was none. "Old Marster" was feared, hon- 
ored and liked bv every negro on the place. In the eyes o± 
them all, he was a greater man than the President. His word 
was law.' There was no feverish hnrry about that old planta- 
tion The clock did not tick more regularly on the mantel 
than did the workmen move about their tasks. All was steady, 
all was quiet, all was regular. Day followed day with respec- 
table monotony ; and each found its task done, m order, with- 
out haste and without rest. You might have set you watch 
by the blowing of the dinner horn at "Squire Long-Tom \\ at- 
son's ■" The very mules knew when it ought to blow, and had 
it not blown at the proper time, there would have been the 
indignant bray (whicker) of protest which the faithful crea- 
ture gives when the time to "take out" arrives, and no signal 
from horn or bell is heard. -, 7 ^i i 

Through the dim distance between noiv and then— thvo\\gi\ 
the mists of the forty-one years— I see it all, clearly; I hear it 
all distinctly. The old farm hangs like a picture on the walls 
of the Past, and I see the overseer on his horse, the slaves going 
to work, the fat, sleek mules going down the long furrow, the 
great oxen drawing the wagon; the Old Marster coming 
slowly, leaning heavily on his cane, to enter the buggy for his 
daily drive to town. The patter of the feet of the sheep, on 
the "leaves under the big trees, is in my ears; and from the 
meadow by the creek comes the tinkle of the cow-bell. The 
blue jay is still at his old tricks in the big oaks, and his yodle 
comes just in time to remove the doubt that it is a hawk that 
sounded his strident scream. The pigeons whirl 'twixt me 
and the sun, as they did in the olden time; and the song of 
the mocking-bird misses no moonlight night of Spring. Sir 
Crow goes flopping along the distant cornfields, just as he used 
to do; and the whistle of the partridge still calls for "Bob 
White." And when it all comes back to me, I think that life m 
the South can never be again what it was in 1860; and that 
had the Abolitionists known the facts, they would have been 
content to go about Emancipation in the same spirit that 
actuated their brethren in England. 

The day comes when my grandfather passes away, just 
after the Civil War was well over; and he never knew that 
the old regime was gone. "Old Marster" was laid out in the 
parlor ; and the slaves, not knowing that they were free, came 
up to "the big house." crept in on tip-toe, took a last look at 
the pallid face, and stole away, awe-struck— and talking very 
low. I was there and listened in terror to the solemn funeral 
sermon which was preached in the parlor; and I crouched 
close to mv father, not daring to speak to him, for he was in 



54 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



a passion of tears, his stalwart frame bent, and shaken with 
sobs. 

Then came the day when all the slaves were called up to 
''the big house," to be told that they were free. It was not the 
first time they had heard of it. The rumor had circulated; 
the fact was fairly known; but as yet it had not been for- 
mally announced by "the boss." In a few words, awkwardly 




mf^'^M- 



AVHEN HE SNATCHED THE COLORS AT 
LODI * * * AND WON THE TRIUMPH. 



enough, no doubt, my father spoke to the assembled negroes, 
telling them that they were free. Whatever they understood 
it to mean, he knew well enough what it meant to him. It was 
a loss of some sixty thousand dollars, the end of a system in 
which he had been reared, and a leap in the dark towards a 
new order of which he knew nothing. It was A'ery hard. He 
had not been responsible for the institution of slavery which, 
for political and selfish reasons, all sections of the Union had 
once supported, and which, for political and selfish reasons, 
had now been swept away, after four years of ruinous Civil 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 55 

War. He had found it here, just as he had found other institu- 
tions, and had considered shivery as he considered taxes, peni- 
tentiaries, government distilleries and Congressional legisla- 
tion — things established and not to be questioned. Being just 
an average man, my father felt the bloAv which swept away 
his fortune; and his talk to the emancipated negroes had none 
of the high-flown sentiment which such an orator as Glad- 
stone indulged in, after he had pocketed the enormous sum 
which England paid him for his father's former slaves. 

Emancipation having been announced, one day, not a negro 
remained on the place, the next. The fine old homestead was 
deserted. Every house in "the quarter" was empty. The first 
impulse of freedom had carried the last one of the blacks 
to town. In a short while, they got tired and hungry ; some 
came back, some settled on other places, and the old place 
was never the same again. 

Years came and went, the new system and my father never 
got on well together. Losses followed losses. Cotton fell in 
price with ruinous tumbles. Why? Well, I iiiiistn''t go into 
that. It would be venturing upon the hot ashes of political 
dispute. I only dare to mention the fact that the men who 
finance the world were destroying the paper currency by the 
hundred millions, and that as the volume of money became 
less, the price of cotton became less. 

At last, came the '"Panic of 1873," and when the smoke 
cleared from that financial Waterloo, my father was one of 
those who was stretched upon the field. 

Let the ardently ambitious son struggle ever so hard to 
Iiold his i)lace at college, he could not do it. In a few months, 
the effort had to be given up. With heavy heart, with suffer- 
ing which no one else saw, he turned away from a chosen 
course, closed the books, quit the classes, and went forth into 
the world, at eighteen, to make his own way. Perhaps, he 
could earn money by teaching a school, and thus go back to 
college ! So he hoped, but it could never be done I 

A country school-teacher, a lawyer of modest beginnings, a 
hard worker from my youth up, I had, in 1895, reached middle 
life, and Avas at length able to indulge a life-long fondness for 
literature. Resides, I had been thrown out of a political 
career, by criminal methods which I was powerless to with- 
stand; and it was necessary to find some congenial labor which 
would occupy the time and divert my thoughts from what I 
then considered an overwhelming misfortune. 

From the days Avhen I first yielded to the spell of the 
imaginary N'apoleon of Abbott, down to the present hour, my 
craving for books has led me far and wide, but I have found 



56 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



no subject which has fascinated me so constantly as that of 
Napoleon. My estimate of him was varied, but my interest 
never flagged. There is nothing which has been told of him^ 
good or bad, which does not find mj- desire to know, as eager 
as ever. I will read any reasonable amount of trashy comment 
to get a new fact. I can even go patiently through the laby- 
rinth of lies told by Fouche. Barras. JNletternich, and Talley- 
rand, if I light upon solid ground, now and then. Even such 




DESERTED AT ELBA. 



liars as they, are compelled by human infirmity to stumble into 
the truth sometimes. 

No soldier that followed where the eagles flew, ever served 
longer under the marvelous leader than I have done. To 
repel the slanderer, to refute calumny, to restore distorted facts 
to their just relation to the man and the times, to seek the 
fixed motive which underlay isolated deeds, to study the trend 
of the current of purpose, regardless of the bubbles on the sur- 
face, the whirling eddies, and the crooks and bends in the 
f>nward rusli of the stream: to vieAv the man and his work, as a 
whole; to note what the European systems were before he 
came, and afterwanh; to fathom liis ideals, and learn from 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 57 

the unfinished sketch what was in his mind ; to charge up to his 
:account every fault and vice and crime, and then to enter upon 
the credit side of the ledger the unremitting toil and the mag- 
nificent achievement — this has been my rule in dealing with 
Napoleon. 

Partisans of aristocracy in all countries hated him, and 
lied about him while he"^ lived. They hate him and lie 
about him now. Apparently, the ruling caste in Great Britain 
still consider it necessary to hire pamphleteers and alleged his- 
torians to write against a militant Democrat who did his 
utmost to lay the broad, deep foundations of good government, 
and to build upon it a temple of opportunity whose every 
golden door should always be open, and from within whose 
blessed portals should peal forth the invitation, "Whosoever 
will, let him come." 

Always, Napoleon has had a friend in me. When the rich 
boys made fun of him at college, my own little fist would 
double up, ready to help him fight. When he wrote prize 
essays which did not take prizes, and composed histories which 
publishers were afraid to touch — I was in sympathy with the 
disappointed author. When he went hungry, in order that his 
last penny might be laid out in buying a book, I understood. 
When he snatched the colors at Lodi and made the dash for 
the bridge, and won the triumph which first put it into his 
head that he might take a decisive part in public affairs, I in- 
tuitively knew his thought. When he went to Egypt, when he 
made himself Consul, when he put away Josephine, when he 
took the Austrian Avife, when he yearned for a son who might 
inherit his splendor and perpetuate his name, when he over- 
stretched the bow, went too far, took counsel of his pride, and 
fell, as Lucifer fell — I sympathized with him, all along, for it 
was all so human. In his reverses, I suffered. When his bosom- 
friends deserted him, when his old school-mates betrayed him ; 
when those to whom he had never refused a favor, turned on 
him and rended him, I was in grief, even as he was. "Berthier, 
don't leave me. I have need of consolation." So pleaded, 
vainly, the prostrate Napoleon at Fontaineblau, beseeching 
Berthier not to join the deserters — Berthier, his bosom 
friend, his pet, the favorite upon whom had been showered 
every gift of imperial bounty. 

And Waterloo — ah, Waterloo tears me all to pieces, just as 
Gettysburg does. The positive suffering which I have to en- 
dure in reading of those two calamities to the human race, is 
•something you could not imagine. I shrink from those two 
subjects, as a heretic must have shrunk from the torture-cham- 
fcer. The heretic knew what was in there ; and his flesh must 



58 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



have quivered and his bones ached, as he approached the room 
of horrors. Even so, I shun Cxettysbiirg and Waterloo, the 
two great calamities of the Nineteenth Centiuy. 

As 'a boy and as a man. my heart was Avith the captive at 
St. Helena. When the English Governor nags at him, when 
the lion is teased and fretted by the mean and tyrannical 
keeper, when they won't forward the books sent to him by 
friends in Europe, when they detain the portrait of his boy, 
when they open the letters of his mother and sisters and 
brothers, when they refuse to allow him to be addressed as 




THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON. 



"Napoleon,'' wdien they deny him the comforts necessar}^ to his 
age and infirmities, when they put such humiliating conditions 
upon his taking exercise that his self-respect will not allow him 
to take it, when he tries to interest himself in gardening, when 
he fights all his battles over again, Avhen he stands out upon 
the jutting rock of the cliffs, and gazes silently toward France 
— France which will one day bring him home to the lordliest 
tomb in all this earth, amid the thunder of cannon and the 
trickle of a nation's tears — he never fails to command my pro- 
found interest and admiration. 

I felt, as a boy, wdiat I know, as a man, that he was crushed 
by the combination of Kings, because of the principles for 
which he stood — those principles being of deadly hostility to 
Absolutism, Divine Right, and Class-rule. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 59 

And it so happened that, in my mature manhood, I recurred 
to the study which thrilled me in my youth. In the volume 
which embodies the result of the reading of a life-time, I 
endeavored to tell the truth about Napoleon — not as a partisan, 
but as a student who has never tired of him, and who considers 
him the most terribly attractive figure history presents. 

Had I not been cast out of Congress by the ballot-box 
stuffers; had the poor, ignorant negroes not been voted against 
me, ten and twenty times apiece, by rich, educated white gen- 
tlemen : hacl dead men and fictitious men not been registered, in 
order that bribed voters might vote those names, I might have 
remained in public life, and might have worked out my well- 
considered plan for a grand political alliance of the West and 
South, against New England class-rule. 

But, since the casting out was an accomplished fact, the 
necessity was upon the Disinherited to do something better 
than brooding over the loss of the Estate. 

Out of this necessity, came first, "The Story of France," 
and, then, the "Napoleon." 

So it is, that adversity may be good for us, and the diet of 
bitter herbs, a blessing in disguise. 



At Fifty 



I'^HIS is Las Olas — he called it so, in the indulgence of that 
* fondness for giving pet names to those things which one 
especially loves. He had already grown old when he chanced 
upon this spot — old and rich — and the joyousness of boyhood 
had come back to him, and he found pleasure in nature and his 
fellow-man. 

Peace to his memory ! he was as golden-hearted a gentle- 
man as ever took a wage-earner by the hand, and called him 
brother. 

After him I came; and after me will come another — and so 
runs the world away. 

A narrow spur of land, stretching out from inlet to inlet, 
forming a ribbon-like island, closed in upon the east by the 
Atlantic, and on the west by the streams that drain the Ever- 
glades — such is the place. Ages and ages ago, the wash of the 
ocean, met by the wash of the rivers, banked up a ridge of 
.sand ; and upon this sand, nature, in the long run of the years, 
planted a jungle; and in the tangled mazes of the jungle the 
deer tramped a trail, the wildcat found a lair, the raccoon 
made a home, the cougar crouched for squirrels, and the rattle- 
snakes multiplied. Water-fowl of all kinds whirled and 
screamed, as they flew from feeding ground to roosting place; 
and the red-bird, the wren and the mocker were never more 
plentiful or musical than here. 

The ships, in stately procession, ])ass down from North to 
South; over yonder on the distant horizon, you can see the 
smoke, or the masts, of those that follow the Gulf Stream from 
the South to the North. Here, on the one hand, is the great 
world and the ocean; on the other, the inland route — by lake 
and sound and river — where traffic flows in safer ways and 
no storm besets the sailor. 

Sit here on the wall of the boat-house, and gaze south- 
ward. A lovelier stretch of water the world does not hold — 
for the tide is still on and everything is water. A fringe of 
forest bounding the view southward, a thread of brilliant blue 
marking the spear-thrust which the ocean makes into the 
brown bosom of the river, the tossing foam which shows where 
the billows from the sea charge home upon the distant beach ; 
and, over all, the mellow radiance of the sunny afternoon — 
for the tide is ebbing now, and the sun is going down. 



PRO&E MISCELLANIES. 61 

All ttfat the ocean could do, this time, has been done — for- 
evermore. The outgoing currents drove back the lake and the 
river, mounting over them both, marching mile after mile land- 
ward, conquering mile after mile of reluctant ground — but the 
invader could go so far and no farther, and he is now sullenlj^ 
drawing back into the sea. 

Great monsters of the deep followed the invading waters, as 
they rolled towards the Everglades, and many a tragedy that 
was veiled by the waters would make you shudder at its story, 
if the victim could speak of its cruel fate — but the monsters 
are drifting seaward now, and their battle of life moves to 
another field. 

If you glance over the island, you will see that the air is 
white with butterflies. There are countless thousands of them. 
They do not fly from flower* to flower, some one way and some 
another, hovering aimlessly or lighting idly, here and there — 
as we dwellers of the up-country have been accustomed to see 
them do. These butterflies are drifting, all in one direction; 
these butterflies have no mind to stop ; these butterflies neither 
linger, nor hover, nor dawdle; these butterflies go drifting 
from North to South, as though they had been called by some 
mysterious voice, were fastened to some mysterious purpose, 
and were the helpless instruments of some mysterious Fate. 

All day long, they have been flying by, over the jungle, over 
the beach, over the lake, over the Sound, over the River — 
obeying some unheard order, following some unseen leader, 
answering some unfathomable design. 

I wonder what it will all be like, when the last tide has 
rolled backward to the sea, and its monsters come forth no 
more — for I am fifty years old, and it is the time of the ebbing 
tide and the declining sun, with me. 

I w^onder whether those creations of the mind, which some 
of us have thought important, are, after all, as aimless and as 
fragile and as ephemeral as these butterflies which go stream- 
ing past, leaving no trace on earth, or sea, or sirv — for I am 
fifty, and I should like to know whether all this effort of heart 
and mind leaves the world brighter and better; or whether we 
are just so many butterflies which Yesterday did not know, 
and Tomorrow will forget. 

There is, at least, this much at Las Olas, and at fifty: 

If one needs rest from turmoil and strife, one can have it. 
If Hope does not come to us as often as she used to do. Resig- 
nation comes oftener, and stays longer. If Disappointment 
brings a^ bitter a cup as she ever did, we have at least learned 
that we need not drink every time we are temptedl by Desire. 
If ambition is as false a traitor as he ever was, we at least 



62 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

know that Duty is a certain guide. If Fame has ftiooked us 
with treacherous flatteries, she has treated us no worse than 
she has treated others; and we can, at least, quit foUowing, 
and be content with the approval of the Voice Within. 

If the road has been rocky and the march has been marked 
with the blood of one's feet, we can, at least, reflect that the 
soldier always flnds it so, and that the end of our campaign 
cannot be far away. 

Thus, after all, one learns philosophy at the best of schools 
— Actual Life. 

Who would be a drone in the hive? Who would be a 
deserter from the fight? Shall trumpets call strong men to 
the fields of human elfort, and I play dastard? Shall flags 
float by, with brave soldiers marching forth to the service of 
Duty, and I play the Coward? 

Never, by the splendor of God ! 

Better the march and the struggle, and the heart-break of 
failure, than the selfish refusal to try ! Better the battle, the 
good fight and the defeat, than the craven lurking in the^ rear. 

Of all the worthless, despicable creatures under the sun, is 
the man who can only eat, sleep, propagate and rot ; the veno- 
mous coward who hates other men because they have been bold 
where he was timid, strong where he was weak, loyal where he 
was false. 

Of all things contemptible, is the man who follows, with the 
hungry eyes of jealous rage and hate, the bigger, loftier men 
who marched while he hung back, toiled where he looked on, 
fou^it while he ran away. 
^^ /Give me the man who will liA^e and die for his ideals, who 

^-w^ will surrender no righteous position without a struggle, who 

^ Avill perish rather than pollute his soul bv apostasy from 

Eight! 

Better — a thousand times better — the tempest and the ship- 
wreck with such a creed, than inglorious decay at the wharf, 
with any cither. Better a Waterloo and a glorious death in the 
•squares of the Old Guard, than worldly pensions and honors 
for base betrayal of cause and country. 

So I thought at twenty. So I think at fifty. I have the 
scars to show for it. And, like any other soldier of the Avars, 
I am proud of them. 

Let the tide ebb — it must be so: let the daylight fade, it 
must be so — but this much any poor mortal can do, and should 
do : Hold aloft, to the very last, the banner of your creed ; fight 
for it as long as you can stand ; and when you go down, let it 
be possible for you to say to those who love you: "Lay a 
sword on my coffin : for I, also, was a soldier in the great 
struggle for humanity." 



A' 



Vv 



r": 



Eccentricities of Nervous People 

Y\/ASN"T it Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, who 
, said that the mental dullness of a man could be measured 
by the amount of noise he could endure without protest? Did 
he not practically contend that nobody but a very stupid per- 
son could be insensible to annoyance of dog-barking, cock- 
crowing, calf-lowing, piano-thumping, and similar afflictions? 

Possibly the old philosopher was feeling out of sorts and 
cross, when he went to the extreme above mentioned. Napo- 
leon could sleep on the battlefield : and surely Napoleon was 
not a dull man. Burns composed his best poem during a ride 
in a thunder-storm — and in Scotland a thunder-clap makes 
noise. Sir Walter Scott wrote his best books while workmen 
of all kinds were building him a great, new house; and the 
sound of hammer and saw and chisel is generally considered 
a tribulation. 

So it must be. that the suti'ering from noise does not neces- 
sarily imply lofty intellect ; nor does the fact that the well- 
fed citizen sleeps soundly all night, while his neighbor's dog 
is iniiDartially saluting each star in the heavens with the same 
monotonous yelp, raise any presumption against the integrity 
of the mental machine of said somnolent citizen. 

It isn't so much a question of brains, as of nerves. 

Julius Cpesar could not hear a rooster crow, without shud- 
dering; but it isn't every fellow who shudders when the rooster 
crows, that has the head of a Csesar. 

DeQuincey would fall into an agony of pain when the pea- 
cock opened up in tuneful numbers; but it isn't; every objector 
to pea-fowl veils that could write "The Household Wreck." or 
"The Flight of a Tartar Tribe." 

Carlyle, when in Scotland, fretted and fumed because the 
roosters broke upon his meditations; and in London, he com- 
plained bitterly of the piano next door; but it isn't every one 
who finds fault with pianos and chickens that could produce 
"Sartor Resartus" and "The French Revolution." 

I have my own idea about a man who is not at all put out 
by the long-continued lowing of a calf, or a cow; but I dare 
not express that f)pinion. It would lose me the good-will of 
hundreds of people who no more mind the loAving of a cow 
than thev do the fifteen-minute solo of the factory whistle, or 



64 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

the practice-lesson of a boy aspiring to a place in the brass 
band. 

The royal stag may be king of a boundless rangq of forest, 
but he is powerless t6 escape the vermin that burrow between 
his horns — pestering him every day of his life. Looking out 
upon the waters of the ocean, you will see the great sword-fish, 
a terror of the deep, spring into the air and give himself a 
convulsive shake ; he is trying to throw off the tiny fish, which 
are to him what the barnacles *xre to a ship. 

It is much the same in human life. Wliila Hercules strug- 
gles with the monster, the little crab nibbles his toe. The small 
things vex, where the large things would but rouse you to 
exertion. Many trifling annoyances, coming at once, or in 
quick succession, drive you to a frenzy ; when, if they had all 
been concentrated in one trouble, your fortitude would have 
steadied the boat. 

DeMorny, the half-brother of the Emperor Louis Napo- 
leon, was a very great man ; he put the stupid Louis Napoleon 
upon the throne and kept him there while he lived; yet with 
all his power, DeMorny did not know how to escape the nui- 
sance of a flute-player whose room was in earshot of the 
Duke's palace. 

The first Napoleon detested and dreaded three smaller men 
— Fouche, Talleyrand, and Bernadotte; yet, with all conti- 
nental Europe at his feet, this greatest of men did not know 
how to rid himself of three deadly enemies who were appar- 
ently in his power. 

Similarly afflicted, the English King, Henry the Second, 
cried out in a burst of impotent rage, "Will nobody deliver me 
of this pestiferous Monk?" — and three zealous courtiers went 
straightway to the church and slew the Monk with their 
swords: whereupon Thomas Becket, the factious Monk, be- 
comes "Saint Thomas of Canterbury": and the proud King 
goes penitentially to the tomb and gets upon his knees, lays 
bare his royal back, and is retributively scourged by surviving 
monks. 

So it seems that, in striving to get free from little aggra- 
vations, we may easily run into big troubles. 

The antlered stag may roam ever so fast and far, but the 
parasite still burrows into his head. The sword-fish may 
spring ever so often and so high, but, in spite of all his con- 
vulsive shakes, some of the tiny fish will hang on. 

So with us, the small vexations are inseparable from life; 
and perhaps if we could remove this one, and that one, and 
the other one, we might become intolerably exacting; and we 
might complain, as the spoiled Grecian did, when a crumpled 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 65 

leaf, on his couch of roses, broke the complete sweetness of 
his rest. 

Nothing so soon unbalances a man as a perpetual annoy- 
ance, which nags at him every day of his life. The irritation 
will become a serious inroad upon the comfort to which he is 
entitled in his home. 

The raindrop wears away the rock; and many a man who 
ought to have gone joyously to take his place in the march and 
the battle of important effort, has been worn into peevish, in- 
active discontent by the constant drip of trivial aggravations. 

That mysterious Wallenstein, of the Thirty Years' War, 
who was almost a match for "the Great Adolphus" himself, 
was unruffled while cannon boomed and swords clashed, but he 
could not bear the rattle of a spur, dragging at the heels of 
the wearer. Nor could he endure the barking of dogs. To 
have peace in his home, in Prague, he bought all the surround- 
ing property. 

The philosopher Kant moved away from a pleasant home, 
to escape the nuisance of a crowing cock, on the adjoining place. 

Rather than have his life worried out of him by pin-pricks 
and flea-bites, it is better that each of us should do in our 
small way what Wallenstein found it necessary to do. If we 
cannot buy a place big enough to afford a quiet center for our 
study or work, we can do what Immanuel Kant did — move out 
and let the chicken crow to the fellow who doesn't mind it. 

Why should a man waste his strength in struggles where 
the game isn't w^orth the candle? As we grow in wisdom, we 
husband our resources for nobler purpose. 

Consider the case of Daniel Webster and the rooster, at the 
Country Fair. 

Wlio was grander than Daniel Webster, on a great subject 
and a great occasion? No man that ever lived. Yet when he 
attended the County Fair and got up to make a hum-drum 
speech, the big rooster m one of the coops began to crow — 
thinking about the prize, maybe — and "the god-like. Daniel" 
gave up the unequal contest. No speech from Webster, that 
day. 

To rise in the Senate and hurl Jovian thunderbolts at 
Hayne or Calhoun, was worth his while; but to speak at a 
County Fair, against a noisy and self-assertive rooster! — no 
wonder Webster gave it up, and sat down. 



Dream Children 

T ONG ago, Charles Lamb wrote an essay on "Dream Chil- 
dren." He had known what it was to be tend&rly attached 
to a good woman, whom he could not wed. Always poor, 
burdened with the duty of caring for a sister who was more 
or less insane, the gentle recluse went his way, in mournful 
resignation, leaving his lady-love to become the wife of an- 
other, and more fortunate, man. But Lamb never escaped 
'"the quiet sense of something lost.'' Affectionate in disposi- 
tion, upright and pure in character, the domestic circle would 
have been to Charles Lamb an Eden of endless bliss. So it 
was that, in his later years, he brooded over what "might have 
been"; called around his knee the children of his fancy; and 
upon these, the ethereal creations of his brain, bestowed the 
caresses which actual children never came to enjoy. 

In the imagination of Lamb, the dream children are those 
that are longed for; or those that should have come and did 
not. But these are not the only ones that might be called 
"Dream Children.'' 

Charles Dickens was referring to the other class, in "Little 
Dorritt," when Mr. Meagles, who had lost one of his daugh- 
ters in her childhood, speaks of the dead child, as growing up 
by the side of her surviving sister. 

Yes, the children which should have come and did not, are 
Dream Babies, but so, also, are those which should have stayed 
with us, after the}^ came — and did not. 

These seemed to die, and to the world they are dead — 
forever lost. A narrow ridge in the church-yard, a tablet, with 
a name and a date — that is all. But. to the grief-racked par- 
ents, the child is not altogether dead. In that Dreamland 
which is as much a pai't of us as the visible world itself, the 
child lives; it comes back to us now and then; reminds us of 
every little Avord and caress; and wrings our hearts, once more, 
with infinite pain. 

In "Little Dorritt,'' Charles Dickens fancies that the dead 
child grows apace with its sister, becoming taller as she grows 
taller, older as she grows older. 

It is not so, at all. The great) novelist, whose soul sympa- 
thized with every living creature, made one of his few mis- 
takes, in dealing with the Dream Children. 



PRO^SE MISCELLANIES. 67 

They do not change. Time halted at their grave: no more 
could he take, or give. What they were, the day they died, 
they remain. Children they were, when Death hushed their 
lips and froze their little hands, — children they are, in Dream- 
land. 

The tracks that were all about the yard, on the dreadful 
day wdien sickness seized her, were still there when you came 
back from the funeral, — the tracks of a child at play: and 
■while the merciful Avind and rain and the passing of other feet, 
soon, hid these tiny footprints, the tracks that she would now 
make, if she could leave the borders of Dreamland, would still 
fit the little shoes that are laid away. 

You sometimes hear her voice,, some time when the day is 
done, and the Spirit of Silence has locked a slumbering world; 
and the voice is that which you heard wdien she climbed upon 
your knee, and laid one hand to one cheek, saying, ''This side, 
Mania's." lending the other to your kiss. 

No, they do not grow up, along with the surviving children, 
— no, indeed ! Carved upon memory by the stern hand of 
Grief, their little figures are as immortally young, as the 
marble children following the motionless procession upon a 
Grecian frieze. 

You do not place her, in youi^ fancy, beside the young peo- 
ple in the ball-room, or on the tennis ground, or even in the 
school. No : she is too young to be there. She w^ould not be in 
her proper place. Nor is she apt to join the other children, 
even of her own age, in the morning, or at mid-day. 

No: she comes in the quiet, melancholy afternoon, wdien 
the shadows are growing longer, when the hurly-burly of the 
day is. done. Then, if tliere should be any little children play- 
ing about in the yard, or lingering on the lawn, she will come. 

You will see her with playmates of her own age ; you may 
fancy her voice mingling with theirs: once more, comes the 
holiest and sweetest of all melodies, her laughter of the years 
gone by. 

Your other children grow up. pass out of the home, are 
swallowed up in the great big world. But the Dream Children 
never leave you. 

There is a plaintive Scotch song whose burden is. the sweet- 
heart's answer to her pleading lover, 

'"I must not leave the old folks yet, we'd better bide a Avee." 

But the Dream Children are yet more inseparable from the 
home and parental love: they abide with you evermore. 



68 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

To the living we sometimes feel like saying, "Oh that we 
could keep you just as you are, — always a child, always inno- 
cent, always free from care and sin and suffering/" 

The Dream Children are so — the3\ only. They never pass 
beyond the place where sleep soothes every disappointment, 
cures eveiy wound, hushes every sob, dries every tear. 

Eternally young, eternally pure, she is yours yet,- — a child, 
as she was the day you closed her eyes. 

Upon ever}^ Christmas Eve, she comes into the stillness of 
the Library; and she hangs her little stocking up, in the fire- 
place, just as she used to do. The other children learned the 
secret of Santa Claus, long ago ; and they quit hanging up 
their stockings on Christmas Eve. But she never learned the 
secret : she will never learn it, now : and, in Dreamland, she still 
loves Santa Claus. So it is — she comes softl}^ into the Library, 
every Christmas Eve. and hangs up the little stocking, just as 
she did, in those days when you did not know how much soul- 
anguish quivered in the voice that was heard in Ramah. 



In you and in me, the conflict goes on, forever, be- 
tween the evil spirit and the good. Today, the Evil Genius 
takes possession of us, and we sin. Then, the good Angel 
gains the upper hand, and we repent bitterly what we did 
yesterday — and we do good tomorrow. When the Angel of 
our better self is with us, the sunshine is brighter, the song 
of the bird is sweeter, the faces of friends reflect our happi- 
ness, the home circle glows with joyous animation, and our 
souls expand to embrace all mankind. 

When the Evil Genius comes, it is another world that we 
are in; and we are different beings. The malign Pontiff of the 
invisible papacy has put all nature and all nations under a 
blighting Interdict. 

Joy flees, laughter dies away, the East wind blows: the 
clouds are leaden and low; we have no friends; home yields, 
no happiness: life is not worth living. 

Who has not experienced this? Happy the man who has 
not. But thrice happy the man who, being the victim of such 
a curse, will try, and try, and try, again, to break the spell of 
this tremendous Excommunication. 

And the Dream Children ? 

They, also, dare not cross the dead-line of the Interdict. 
On the dreadful day of Excommunication, they, also, avoid us. 
In the death-struggles of fierce and ruthless passions, they have 
no place. They can only come, when the Evil One has been 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 69 

thrown out. But, when the spell has passed, when the heavens 
smile again, then the Lost One comes; then she sits upon the 
knee again; then her head nestles against the breast again; 
and once more is heard the old-time music of her voice, as 
she puts a little hand to one of her cheeks, and says, "^'This 
side. Mama's." The other, you may kiss, — as you yield to the 
infantile imperialism, which reserves a realm sacred to her 
mother. 



The Oddities of the Great 

TS IT a fact, that men of genius are more apt to be eccentric 
than average mortals who are not so gifted? Or is it that 
nobody cares to notice the peculiarities of the obscure, while 
a hero-worship]Ding Avorld fastens greedy eyes upon the small- 
est detail which illustrates the manner of man that a genius 
happens to be? 

The grouchy old Thomas Carlyle declared, most imreason- 
ably. that Harriet Martinau's description of Daniel Webster's 
manner of lounging before the fireplace, with his hands in 
his pockets, was worth more than all the books which that 
industrious blue-stocking had written, on history, biography, 
political economy, and what-not. 

The surly sneer is undeserved, of course, but it illuminates 
the human appetite for details about great men. Carlyle put 
upon paper his own impression of Webster, after having been 
in "the great expounder's" company, and a most masterly 
portraiture it is — "Steam engine in breeches," and so forth. 

I:^ you thought It worth your while to make a study of the 
comparatively unimportant individual who owns the adjoin- 
ing farm, or who keeps the fruit store, or who presides over 
the Justice's Court, or who represents the railroad at the ticket- 
window, or who assigns your room at the hotel, or who. takes 
your fare on the cars, you would probably find him just as 
full of a sense of individuality as any of the Great : and his 
daily life, his home habits, his little personal peculiarities, 
are just as marked, as were those of the more conspicuous mor- 
tals who possessed genius. 

Nevertheless, we are not going to j^ester ourselves to gather 
facts concerning the queerness, the eccentricity, the meanness, 
the odd freaks of intellect which characterize the anonymous 
Toms, Dicks and Harrys: what we do want to know, is the 
whole story, every detail, concerning the lofty men who domi- 
nate our hero-worshipping souls. 

Did Jones, who owns the adjoining farm, cut a large hole 
in the door of the house, for the use of the cat, and a small 
one for the kitten ? We don't know, and we don't care. But 
if Sir Isaac Newton does a thing like that. — behold the bug 
in amber! Literature will tell the tale, to the remotest pos- 
terity. 

Su])pose a miscellaneous city dude hires a horse and buggy, 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 71 

lakes his gum-chewing Mary Lou to ride, and is confronted 
with an emergency which requires that he unharness the horse, 
—and he doesn't 'know how. The fact does not even attract 
the attention of the rural correspondent of the country paper, 
as does the hirgest turnip, the earliest water-melon, and the 
goings and comings of the local John Henrys and Susan Anns. 
But how dilferent it is with Coleridge and Wordsworth ! 
Those mighty monarchs of the realms of rhyme come driving 
home, find the hired man absent from the post of duty, and 
fatuously undertake to strip the gear off, all by themselves. 
The poets progress famously until they try to remove the col- 
lar In those days the collar did not buckle and unbuckle, 
as now. It was a continuous ring of leather. The two poets 
could not get it over the horse's head. In vain they pulled 
and pushed. No go. They then fell back to get a good view 
of the horse. Was he sick? had his head swollen, since the 
collar was put on? Manifestly, something unusual had hap- 
pened. It was the same collar and the same horse; yet, the 
collar, which had gone over the horse' head, was too small to 
come off. 

The two poets gravely and anxiously discussed the matter, 
and made another earnest effort to remove the collar. Nothing 
doing Happily, the servant-girl caught sight of the puzzled 
philosophers, and went to the rescue. Turning the big end 
of the collar upward, she passed it over the horse's head, and 
sailed off triumphantly, full of pride and the exultant sense 
of superiority. In her eyes, the men who didn't have sense 
enough to unharness a horse, were mighty sorry creatures, 
even though they had written "The Ancient Manner,' and 
"The Excursion." 

The visitor who found Shelley climbing a picket-fence, 
every time he left or entered the yard of the Italian villa he 
had "rented— the OAvner having left the gate locked— was vastly 
amused at the poet's simplicity. 

"Why don't you break the lock, and use the gateway?" 
asked the sagacious visitor. 

"Bless my soud, I never thought of that!" said Shelley, 
immensely relieved at the idea of not having to climb the 
picket fence again. 

Can you doubt, that the visitor went away, pluming himself, 
upon his advantage over the radiant intellect of whose marvel- 
ous fruitage are the "Adonais," the "Cloud," and the "Ode to 
the Nightingale"? 

If Shakespeare had any peculiarities, we don't know it: 
he is so rounded-out, symmetrical, and perfectly healthy as to 



72 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

be almost impersonal. So I would speak of Goethe, were it. 
not for his cold brutalities to the women whom he fascinated. 

But, with these two exceptions, it is almost impossible to 
name a single literary genius whose eccentricities were not 
conspicuous. You will dispute this, and remind me that Sir 
Walter Scott's was a heart of gold, his mind eminently sane 
and free of the morbid. But you would be wrong — terribly 
wrong. Deep down in the soul of Sir Walter, there was that 
unmanliness which crouches and cringes. It is a hard thing 
to say of him who wrote the "Young Lochinvar," "Marmion," 
and the battle-song in "The Lady of the Lake," but it is a 
true sa^ang. Had Sir Walter treasured, as a sacred heirloom, 
some cups which had touched the lips of William Wallace, 
or of Robert Bruce, or of that magnificent brute, Richard 
the Lion-hearted, we could understand him, and respect him 
for it; but when we see him catch up and put in his pocket, 
to carry home and keep as a holy relic, a glass whose wine 
had been guzzled by George the Fourth, that most putrid of 
all putrid Kings, a gust of scorn and contempt sweeps over 
us. Why? We see the crouching of the courtier, to the office 
of King. We see that, after all. Sir Walter's was the soul of 
the lackey. The cringing to power and Avealth and militarism, 
saturates all his books. A Tory to the very bottom of his 
heart, he hates a rebel, as constituted authority always does. 
Upon the Dissenter, in religion and in politics, he empties the 
phials of his uttermost derision, — doing his level best to make 
him ludicrous and despicable. "Submit yourselves to those in 
power; bend your necks to Kings and Popes; believe that 
every wrong is right, if you found it established when you 
came into the world" — that is the message of Sir Walter's 
books, and it has done enormous harm. 

The oddities of Carlyle Avould of themselves fill a lengthy 
chapter. The crowing rooster bothered him grievously; the 
lowing cow was not his favorite music ; the dog that sat in one 
place and barked 1,000,000 times found no favor in his sight; 
and the piano banger next door sometimes got notes, which 
were not on her scale. Poor old philosopher, telling all man- 
kind how to live, and be good and happ}', and raving like a 
madman most of the time, himself. Discovering after marriage 
that he had no business marrying, he humanly went to Avork 
to make both himself and the unfortunate wife wretched. 
Caught in a similar predicament, John Ruskin gave his wife 
away — to the painter Millais, who had made her, and a fine lot 
of children, ideally happy. 

Apparently, no other man sought to win Mrs. Carlyle, and 
she was left to the life which caused her to say, in the anguish 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 73 

of her hungry, tortured soul, '1 feel as if I were the keeper of 
a private madhouse." 

Lamaratine says, "Genius bears within itself a principle of 
destruction, of death, of madness." 

This is unquestionably true — a very terrible fact. Such 
men as Byron, Coleridge,' Shelley, Alfieri,- Dante, Swift, Ten- 
nyson, Poe, Landor, were assuredly nonsane, if judged by ordi- 
nary standards. There was an unbalance of faculties, a lack 
of mental symmetry and poise. 

What a motley procession it is — that of the great men of 
English literature! There is burly, surly, overbearing Doctor 
Johnson, with his drawing-room amenities — such as "I per- 
ceive, Sir, that you are a vile Whig!" and his catching hold 
of the hands of one of the company, to prevent gesticulation 
during the conversation; and his stopping in the street to pick 
up orange-peel, for some mysterious, undiscoverable purpose; 
and his touching the lamp-post regularly, as he walked along; 
and his swallowing, without a wink, the absurd story about 
the Cocklane Ghost, and his compiling a Dictionary, in which 
he scornfully defines a pension as "the bribe taken by a traitor 
for the betrayal of his country," and then accepting a pension 
for himself. 

There is poor Chatterton, starving in his garret; and 
Henry Fielding reeling toward home, after midnight, drunk 
as a lord. There is Dr. Smollett, poor as a church mouse, 
writing masterpieces of realistic fiction, that have delighted 
millions and made fortunes for publishers and book-sellers. 

There is the Satanic figure of Dean Swift, hating the whole 
human race, venting his impotent rage in torrents of bitter 
obscenities — incidentally breaking the hearts of the only two 
fellow-beings that ever loved him. 

There is Pope, the little cripple, who is so bright and so 
ready to sting; who has to be sewed up in a sack, every morn- 
ing, and put to bed like a child at night; and who threatens 
to spite the unappreciative age in which he lives, by writing 
no more poetry. 

There is Oliver Goldsmith, the sweetest spirit that ever 
touched the chords of human feeling; and there is Sheridan, 
who, when arrested one night for maudlin drunkenness, and 
asked his name, answered, thickly. "Wilberforce" — that being 
the eminently respectable name of England's pioneer Prohibi- 
tionist. 

Yes, and here is her ladyship, Mary Wortly Montague, 
high-born dame, of brilliant wit, known as the introducer into 
Europe of the extremely dubious vaccination practice; and 
whose hiirh breeding once manifested itself in a rather famous 



74 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

repartee. Some daring person having ventured to remark to 
the Lady Mary that her hands were dirty, that courageous 
patrician retorted, daintily, "You ought to see my feet!" 

And there is Southey, tearing along the road of that hag- 
gard existence of his, composing monumental epics, which no- 
body reads, and throwing off a lew lyrics, and one biography, 
which are classics, and immortal. 

And let us sigh for Keats, the sensitive. Did he really creep 
to bed, turn his face to the wall, and grieve himself to death, 
because an immensely inferior man had made fun of his 
poems? I hope not. His work has so wondrous a quality, 
it is painful to believe that he was so structurally weak. 
How much finer Byron was, when the same Quarterly Review 
ridiculed his ridiculous early poems. Instead of going to bed, 
my Lord Byron gulps down a few bumpers of wine, seizes his 
gray goose quill, and goes after the whole tribe of English and 
Scotch Reviewers, putting some of thein to bed. In fact, 
Byron hadn't written a line that was worth while, until then. 
The lash of the reviewer aroused him. 

Much of what the poets write is unintelligible. Perhaps 
they, themselves, understood it, but that is doubtful. Don't 
you get the idea that Goethe lost his wa}^ in the latter part of 
Faust? Does Coleridge always make his meaning knowable? 
Are you quite sure that Poe and Browning knew what they 
were trying to say, all the time? 

We live in a land where Walt Whitman has many warm 
admirers. Let me close by quoting a few lines from the 
inspired Walt. The devotees will doubtless unravel the poet's 
meaning; but a lunacy commission would be justified in hesi- 
tating, a long while, before deciding that such writing is not 
evidence of mental aberration: 

"Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I 

touch or am touched from; 
The scent of these armpits, aroma finer than prayer: 
This head more than churches. Bibles and all creeds. 
If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the 

spread of my own body, or any part of it." 



Bubbles on the Stream 

THE day is drowsy : insects by the million make their sub- 
dued, 'silvery music in the fallow field: louder sounds 
have, somehow, gone into the distance: infinite quietude falls 
upon nature, and upon you. 

Intensely green is our much-scorned but marvelously beau- 
tiful, short-leaf pine, luxuriant of plumage, endless in variety 
and grace of symmetry; and against its serried ranks of un- 
broken green stands the yellowing poplar, and the sweet-gum 
turning to bronze. Notice how the vine of the poison-oak 
wreaths its scarlet ribbons through the maple and the pine; 
see it run, like streams of blood, down the tree. 

You drink in the scene, as a Bacchanal would sip the nec- 
tar of the gods; and then you stroll down to the creek, and 
rest on the rock, by the little cascade. 

You fall to watching the bubbles! 

The surface is covered with them, always; but no combi- 
nation, however cunningly arranged, can remain so. 

Not for an instant. 

The bubbles form, the bubbles break, the bubbles re-form, 
and again they break. Always, there are the bubbles, but 
never there, to stay, are the bubbles at which you gaze. Al- 
ways coming, they" are always going ; always combining, they 
as quickly dissolve. 

Bubbles of Yesterday— where are they? Bubbles of Tomor- 
row — what will thev be ? 

The stream is eternal, like the hills: bubbles come, bubbles 
go, but the stream sings the old, old Song of the Brook. 

Is there any symbol of life more complete, more striking, 
than we have here in, these bubbles on the stream ? 

Consider the family— can its relations be made to endure? 
It is different today from what it was yesterday— different m 
its own members, different in its touch with the outer world. 

Even your own little household, is a group of bubbles on 
the ever-running stream of life. 

Where are those who sat around the hearth, in the years 

gone by? ■, - a 

Where will tomorrow leave those who sit around it now? 
The stream will flow on, to its appointed purpose in the 

unfathomable plan of the Master; but the bubbles— ah, they 

come and they go. 



76 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



Even as we clasp the hand, it is cold. Even as we kiss the 
cheek, it fades. 

Then consider that larger circle — your friends. See the 
bubbles change. Yesterday, your enemies were your friends: 
Tomorrow, your friends will be your enemies. No tie can 
fasten these human hearts of ours. Gratitude is a dream. 
Loyalty is the unattainable. Under the feet of Selfishness, of 




THE STREAM ETERNAL AS THE HILLS. 



Envy, of Jealousy, the ennobling affections are trampled with 
remorseless tread. No fair Italia, of kind offices and jientle 
words, can stay the ruthless march of Attila and the Huns. 
So it is that the circle of friends is just as a larger group of 
bubbles on the pool, ever changing, never staying, ever com- 
bining, now falling away, now coming together again. Alas, 
the heart-break of it ! 

Then look again, and contemplate the larger stream of 
town-life, of State-life, of national relationship, of world-wide 
alliances. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. T7 

What are these but vaster collections of bubbles on the 
stream ? 

You hear people say, "Politics make strange bed-fellows." 

It means that the bubbles have changed. They had to. It 
is the law of nature. . , • n 

In the commercial world, in the domain of religion, m all 
industrial callings— everywhere we look, we see the bubbles 
breaking, and the bubbles forming. Nothing endures. Each 
great nation is not only composed of ever-changing bubbles 
—each a scene of perpetual breakings up and re-alignments — 
but the family of nations is never the same, for a single year. 
They change' their attitude to each other, while you look. 
Friendly today, any two of the Powers may be at war tomor- 
row. 

Poor mortals that we are ! Each bubble of us fondly be- 
lieves that he has come to stay. 

And Ave never can bring ourselves to realize that, in the 
immeasurable dimensions of the Universe, we are no more than 
bubbles on the stream. 

"Down and out!" laughs the cold stream, as it hurries 
away with the breaking bubbles. 

"Down and out!" is what the epitaph means, whether writ- 
ten on the monument which defies Time, or briefly traced in 
the memory of the few who knew when the bubble disap- 
peared. 



A Rose on the Snow 

T^ID you ever snatch a day from the dusty world of strife, 
^ and carry it with you to the great, silent woods of Indian 
Summer ? 

Did you ever take by the hand the sweet, patient wife 
who loves you so, and say unto her, "Sweetheart, will you walk 
with me, today?" 

If you never have, then a rich old glass of the nectar of 
the gods stands neglected within your reach — nectar as free 
to the peasant as to the King. 

Very quietly, we went, we two, my sweetheart and I, taking 
our way along the path, then across the falling leaves — 
saying little. 

The sounds of travel on the road were left far behind, and 
we were alone, she and I, in the majestic forest. 

How gorgeous it was ! The dress-parade of nature was 
never more brilliant, nor more alluring. The red Sugarberry 
put its battle-flag on every summit. The golden Maple walked 
hand in hand with the Ked Elm; and, underneath, crowded 
the Dogwood and the Sassafrass in serried skirmish-line. 

Saul-like, towered the Pine, over blazing yellow Hickory, 
over purple heads of Oaks. 

And the falling leaves — how they drifted, dazzling snow- 
flakes of rainbow hue from the skies that held no cloud — drift- 
ing, here against a rock; drifting, yonder against a bank; 
falling straight, or falling aslant — ^but falling, falling, and 
making upon the ground a carpet, deep and soft and matchless. 

We walked uj^on it very slowly, looking about us and paus- 
ing to listen, now and then. A squirrel was gathering nuts, 
just above us. How silly it was of him to break away, leaping 
frantically from limb to limb to reach his cozy home ! He was 
in no danger, for we had no cruelty in our hearts, that day — 
surely none, that day. 

The sap-sucker and the yellow-hammer were busy on de- 
caying limbs, and the tattoo which they beat with their long 
bills rang metalically down the woods. 

A covey of partridges, sunning themselves, got almost un- 
der our feet before, with a great flutter, they rose and whirled 
away — my sweetheart clapping her little hands with pleasure 
as they went. 

Over le^ge after ledge of rocks between two steep hills. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. T9 

heavily wooded, dashed a little stream, from the spring, far 
up the slope. 

Was ever music sweeter? We said we did not think so; 
and as we noted the record of the water-path on the rocks, 
and counted how long, how very long, that little stream must 
have been cleaving its way down to the gray rocks whereon 
we sat, we caught some idea how old, how very old, it all was ; 
and I wondered if a Red Man had stood there, beside the 
dusky damsel he loved; and which furrow on the granite the 
slender rill was running in, when Helen of Troy was young, 
and when chained thousands, beneath a tyrant's lash, were 
hewing the stone for the Pyramids. 

No wonder that in this idle dreaming my sweetheart got 
away from me, unnoted, and went further down the glen. She 
soon called me to see her feed the fishes— silver-sided fishes 
by the score, which came to her scattered crumbs almost as if 
they knew her. 

And so we strolled from rock to rock, and tree to tree — 
each more splendidly aglow with the colors of Indian Summer 
than the other. 

It was all quiet— very grand, very lovely, very saddening. 
Boisterous laughter in these regal woods had been sacrilege. 
Light thoughts, beneath those falling leaves, had been crim- 
inal. In the sound of these speeding waters over the old, gray 
rocks, bad passions hid themselves, and kindness was in the 
mind and in the heart. 

The rude, busy world geemed far away — and forgotten. 
Its cares, its toils, its strife, its aspirations were all behind and 
away. 

We were alone, my wife and I, and our thoughts like our 
hands, were joined together. We did not speak overmuch. 
There was no need. 

"What need had I to tell her how my thoughts had gone 
back to the time when a nameless, homeless suitor founds grace 
in her sight? 

There was no need. She knew — she well knew. 

What need for her to say that amid all shortcomings, I had 
given her the knowledge of fervent loyalty, of unbounded 
devotion which never wearied in its utterance, or its proofs? 

There was no need; I knew it well. 

Wh^i need of either to speak of these things ? 

None. 

And ah, what need was there for us to speak of that which 
always makes the lip tremble and the very soul cry out, in 
boundless grief. 

There was no need. I knew that the tiny footsteps of one 



80 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

who shall never walk again, followed her all along those woods 
I knew that the clear, joyous little voice sang in every song 
of the water. I knew that down every glade of the murmur- 
ing trees, there came the whispered question to her as to me, 
"Shall she ever be ours again?" 

And I had only to look into her sad face to know, that the 
question was not answered unto her, any more than it was 
unto me. 

And so I took her hand and led her from the woods — kiss- 
ing her queenly lips many a time, and bearing her up the 
steeps with my arm. 

As we went to our home, the long red lances of sunlight 
fell over the brown fields, and the evening came in upon us, 
radiant and warm. 

When the moon silvered the treetops that night, it looked 
into many a happy home, I trust, but into none had it followed 
man or woman who had more deeply drank from the splendors 
of the day. 

Oh, friend and brother, leave your plow some day; leave 
your mill some day; leave your bank some day; leave your 
office some day, and in God's magnificent forest, commune with 
Him and with yourself — your past, your present, and your 
future. 

Your life must be a bleak snowdrift indeed, if such a day 
does not lay a rose upon it. 



Reverie and Suggestion 

/^HRISTMAS is in the air. You can feel it in the night- 
^ time, when you hear the chickens wierclly crow, as they do 
not at any other season. 

You can feel it in the daytime, as you note the loosening 
of the close-fitting harness of business and social form; as 
you listen to the ring of the small voices of the children, who 
step more briskly down the street and cluster in more hilarious 
groups; as you see the tendency o:^ Man to throw off the light 
costume of restraint and civilization, and to let slip, once more, 
the lustful inclination of the original savage. 

* * * * * * * 

Yes, there's a feeling of Christmas in the air. What sort 
of a feeling does that put into your heart, my brother? Docs 
it melt you to think of the dim years when you were a bright 
little oy, and when you tip-toed into the parlor at daybreak, 
to see what* Santa Claus had put into your stocking? 

Long before the sun thought of getting up, you were up — 
you and your little sister — and into the half-dark parlor you 
went, almost in fear as well as in hope, for the white stockings 
hanging stiffly there in the fireplace seemed the least bit 
ghostly. 

In that gray dawn, how happy you were to empty the stock- 
ing and find that, by some mysterious chance, Santa Claus had 
brought you just what you wanted. Since then, has purer 
joy ever filled your soul? Has life given you sweeter mo- 
ments ? 

No: the exquisite enjoyment of that early morning is some- 
thing that Providence never gave to you, again. 

Do you remember the vague' pain that smote you when you 
had grown large enough to be told that there was no such 
Benevolent Friend of all the little children, as Santa Claus? 

What was the next great event and happiness of your life? 

It was when the sweetheart to whom you had been awk- 
wardly, timidly, making love, let you "cut out" all the other 
boys, and walk home with her. 

Weren't you proud? And wasn't she pretty? 

Those clear, pure eyes; those rosy cheeks; those smiling 
lips: that wealth of glossy hair; those pearly teeth — heavens! 
how you worshipped her. 



8:;^, PROSE yfTSCELLANIES, 

Would you have swapped places with a King that day, 
when she first accepted your invitation to a buggy ride? 

When she came close to you and pinned the hyacinth or 
the violet to your coat-lapel, your heart beat pit-a-pat, and you 
held your breath till the dainty boutonniere was fixed. 

And when you had worn the flower till it Avas wilted, you 
reverently laid it away in some book — didn't you? And you 
have them yet — nor is there gold enough in all the world to 
buy those faded flowers ! 

After ever so long a time, as you thought — ages^ it seemed 
to your impatience — she said, "y^s" — and let you kiss her. 

Wasn't that a glorious night? 

You walked on air as you went back to your home, didn't 
you? 

You were in such a state of happy exhilaration that you 
couldn't sleep. 

Are you ashamed to admit that deep down in your heart 
was a tender thankfulness to the God who had blessed you 
with the love of so good a woman? 

Ah, well — you were married to her, and you two began the 
upward struggle together. 

How hard the climb of the hill ! What labor there was ; 
w^hat disappointments; what days of bleak despondency; what 
nights of black despair. 

In that terrible climb of the hill, did you neglect your wife? 

Did you fail of that tender consideration which was her 
due? 

Did you sometimes bring your clouded face and sour mind 
to the fireside, and morosely impose your own sufferings upon 
her? 

AVere those sweet lips made to tremble in mute pain? 
Those fond eyes to shed secret tears? 

Happy the husband who can say, "I never did. Wretch 
that I am — / can noty 

After a while, children came to you. Then were renewed 
delights of Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning. To settle 
upon what should be bought for the children's stockings; to 
smuggle these selections into the house; to watch the little 
ones hang up their stockings; to hear their guesses and specu- 
lations, as to what Santa Claus would bring; to listen to the 
naive, "I hope Santa Claus will bring me" so and so; and 
then after they had cuddled down and were sound asleep — do 
you remember how you and your wife went back into the room 
where the stockings hung? There was pleasure in it — and yet, 
there was sadness, too. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 83 

It was late in the night when you were acting Santa Claus 
for the little ones, and it was a time for sober thoughts. 

Would next Christmas Eve find all the stockings hung? 

Would three merry voices mingle in the hubbub over the 
gifts of Santa Claus, and would three happy little faces shine^ 
as they came running to you, with: "See what Santa Claus* 
brought me?" 

Or, upon next Christmas Eve, would you be sitting alone 
by the dying fire, racked with a pain that would never, never 
lose its power to torture — because upon this Christmas Eve 
there were but twof 

The years pass, pass, pass — and now you are on the Western 
slope of the hill. The wife who climbed the hill with you 
is still at your side. No matter who else failed you, she did 
not. No matter who else found fault with you, she never did. 
If she ever spoke to you unkindly, and served you reluctantly, 
or fell short of perfect wifely devotion, j^ou did not realize it. 

How can you reward your noble wife ? Will you not prove 
to her that you appreciate her? Will you not bring to her 
that splendid loyalty, which a proud woman prizes more 
highly than a miser prizes gold? 

In word, in thought, in deed, will you not be as true to her, 
as she has been to you ? 

Will you not prove by unfailing tenderness with which 
3'OU minister to her happiness, now, the depth of your remorse 
for your shortcomings in those early years? 

Will you not call back the spirit of the days of your court- 
ship, and be as proud of her kiss, just as happy to take her to 
your arms, as on that glorious night when she promised to be 
yours, and yielded her queenly lips to your kiss ? 

But perhaps you are of another sort. Perhaps you think 
all this silly. Maybe the softening touch of Christmas-time 
softens nothing in you. I pray God it may not be so. 

For your sake, as well as your wife's, listen: The only 
human being that you can count on to stand by you,, in spite 
of "the world^ the flesh, and the devil,'' is your wife. 

Children will grow up and pass onward — out of your life 
and into one of their own. Relatives and friends may go with 
vou a long way, but they will not go all the way. Your wife 
will. 

In all the universe, you can't be sure of any one but her. 
Then make the most of her. Are her cheeks faded ? Kiss her 
on the lips, and then see the roses blossom once more on that 
pallid face. 

Have her eyes been swollen and dim with tears? Put your 



84 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



arms about her, and tell her you love her just as much as you 
ever did. 

Then watch the light of joy kindle those eyes, until they 
sparkle as brightly as in the days of youth. 

Ah, it is so easy to make a woman happy, if the right man 




PROSE MISCELLANIES. 85 

wants to do it. And the right man td make your wife happy, 
is you. 

Think of the nights you were sick untO) death, and she 
nursed you; think of the fearful agonies of the birth-hour, 
when she brought your children into the world; think of the 
long-drawn years in which she has daily done the drudgery of 
a slave; think how she has had to bear the Cross of your 
troubles, as well as her own; think what she has had to go 
through with in rearing your children; think of her cramped, 
dull and monotonous life at home, while you were mingling 
with the bustling crowds of the outside world. 

Think of all this, brother, and allow much for the jaded, 
faded wife. Go to her and warm your own heart, as well as 
hers, by talking to her, in the old, old way of lovers. 

Court her again, as you courted her when you sought her 
hand. 

Tell her that she is just as pretty as ever. This may pos- 
sibly not be the truth; but. if a lie at all, it will be the whitest 
one you ever told. The Recording Angel may feel in duty 
bound to charge it upon the debit side of your account, but 
as he washes it out afterwards with a tear, he will enter an 
item to your credit on the other side of your ledger, and he 
will write it in letters of gold. 



As It Is, and as It May Be 

I WAS very tired, for the work I had been doing was hard-, 
* and now- that the room grew warm and the long task was 
finished, I fell asleep. 

No one in the house had been awake but me, while I had 
for many hours gone over the dreary record of the poor, the 
patient poor, the suffering poor — God's unprovided poor. The 
hours had stolen by, like slippered monks, and it was far into 
the night when the heaviness fell upon my eyes, and I was 
asleep. 

Many a Avhirling fiction passed through my heated fancy 
before there was order in my Dream, but after a while all was 
clear — cruelly, shockingl}^ clear. 

A universe unfolded, spreading out, like a map. Every 
grade and class and condition of human life was before me, 
at once — with no mist before my eyes and no distance to con- 
fuse the outline. 

What I saw was this: A magnificent world of land and 
sea; of river and lake and forest and fertile field, mountains 
seamed with hidden wealth ; valleys rich with grain. 

To this world its Maker had given the name of "J. home 
for th6 human familyy 

But the human family had grown very large. Its foot- 
prints were thick upon every stretch of solid ground, and its 
vessels moved upon all the waters of all the seas. 

But the earth was no longer a family-home, and men were 
no longer brothers. With furious enmity, they hated each 
other. They worshipped God, but none of them regarded His 
law. They cried Peace, and loosed the war dogs. They rose 
from prayer, and Avent to rifle-practice. 

Churches flourished — so did crime. Schools flourished — so 
did ignorance. Charities flourished — and paupers died in the 
streets. I wondered what it all meant. 

There was land enough for all. They said that God had 
made it for all. But the few had taken possession of it, and 
the many had no homes. There was food enough for all : but 
the few had seized it, and the many had not enough to eat. 

I tried to discover how the human family kept itself alive. 
I found it was by Worl-. 

There were many kinds of work. Some labored to pro- 
duce food : some labored to produce clothing. Some labored 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 87 

to make houses, others to make deadly weapons, only. Some 
labored to teach the peoj^le the law of God; others to ex- 
pound and enforce the laws which men had made for them- 
selves. Others still labored (or pretended to labor) to 
make just laws, by which God's will should be done in the 
affairs of men. 

In my dream, I saw clearly a most singular thing — those 
whose work was most important to the world, were paid less 
for their labor than anybody else. Those who merely amused 
the world, got higher wages than those who fed and clothed it. 
Those who played and danced, got higher pay than the man 
who built the house they played and danced in. Those who 
labored to amuse the idle, drew enormous salaries and were 
the pets of the powerful ; while those who kept the powerful 
clothed and fed, lackfed food and clothing for themselves. 

In my dream, the cause of this cruel state of things became 
clearer. Those who had made the law had so cunningly done 
it, that the strong man was master of the weak. The strong 
man became the ruler, and out of the weak man's own pro- 
duce, gave him whatever lie chose. This made the strong man 
stronger, and the weak man weaker. 

I thought I heard a great heart-breaking cry go up from 
those poor producers of wealth, but their task-masters heard 
it not — so deaf are they who will not hear. 

I thought that, now and then, these workers and producers 
grew furious against their oppressors, and rose in revolt. But 
they were put down again — some shot and some imprisoned. 

I thought that, now and then, T^eaders sprung up among 
those suflt'ering people and promised to go to the Great House 
of Council, where the laws were tnade.^ and to change these bad 
laws into good ones. But either, such Leaders were too fcAv. 
or the strong men would take those Leaders aside into some 
safe and secret place, and, by some unknown charms and per- 
suasions, entice those Leaders into forgetfulness of the miseries 
of the People. 

So passed the first day of my dream — the Dream of Today 
— of the world as it is. 

Like a vanishing landscape, I saw the great Palaces of the 
Rich, and the wretched huts of the poor; the fine raiment of 
the one, and the rags of the other; the Avell-spread tables of the 
one, and the cold hearth and empty dish of the other. The 
factories went whirling into space — but through the windows 
I could see the pale, thin features of the children who toiled 
there. The mine opened one brief moment, and I could see 
the pitiful serf of the Coal King. The garret sped by, and it 
made the tears come, to see the shivering needlv-woman sew- 



88 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

ing there. The streets swam by, filled with their squalor, their 
hunger, their ceaseless vice and crime and suffering — and 
Christianity spoke in these streets through the mouth of the 
Policeman, and what she said to the ragged outcast was: 
'"''Move on''' ; what she said to the starving child was, '"''Move 
onP 

And it strangelj^ got into my Dream, somehoAv, that the 
cause of all the sorrow was that the Order of the world; was a 
mistake — a dreadful misunderstanding. The unnatural had 
become the rule. A feverish haste had taken possession of 
mankind; and the race was madly run for things which men 
really did not need. One man rushed because another rushed, 
cheated because others cheated, hoarded because others hoarded 
— was cruel because he thought the same measure would be 
meted out to him^ were situations reversed. 

* V >;: * * * * 

But the troubled nightmare passed, and I fell into the 
Dream of Tomorrow — a gorgeous Dream, a Spirit-lifting 
Dream — of the world as it may be. I seemed to look upon the 
same world, but it was filfed witH harmony, and bathed in 
light. 

The great rush and worry had passed away. The fever 
and the pain were gone. The vast machinery of production 
moved like the stars, ''''never resting., hut never hasting.'''' There 
was room for all, and food for all. The Earth was dedicated 
anew as a Home for God's Children — its products their food. 
Religion burst out from the cold churches, and abode in the 
lives of men — that high Religion which loves mercy, does good 
and seeks the Right. 

Law was no longer frittered away among wrangling advo- 
cates and stupid Judges. She took her broad principles into 
the walks of life, and did justice., between man and man. 
Technicality no longer manacled Truth, and a Judgment Avas 
no longer the trophy of the trickiest, or strongest lawyer. 

The Rulers of the People no longer scorned them, nor 
defrauded them with cunning laws and sharp practices. The 
People themselves now ruled, and the worker was no longer a 
dependent. Special Privilege had been slain, and Opportunity 
was free for all. 

There were no outcasts — for all had homes. There were 
no beggars, for there was work and fair wages for all. None 
had much more than they needed; none had much less. 

There was little crime, for its cause had been diminished. 

There was brotherhood among men, for the motive for 
rivalry and hatred had been taken away. 

War had ceased. The killing of men had become horrible, 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. SU 

whether singly or b}' thousands. A Murderer was detested, 
whether he sleAv with a knife or a sword, Avith a pistol or with 
a Maxim. 

The hum of peaceful industr^i was in the air. The melody 
of innocent laughter was in the streets. The song of the con- 
tented Reaper was in the field. Music was supreme — it was 
the melody of healthy, happy life. 

Why was Tomorroio so much brighter and better than 
Today? This question seemed to come to me in my dream. 
And from somewhere, this reply seemed to be borne : 
"Because the mistake of yesterday had been found and 
corrected. Because Injustice had been driven out of the Laws; 
because favoritism in legislation had ceased; because the pro- 
ducer of Avealth had secured fair treatment ; because the cun- 
ning laws of the Task-master were all dead; because there 
were a few brave men all over the world who had solemnly 
sworn, before God, that the old false order of things should 



Out of the dim Past seemed to come voices: 

One said : "/ gave my life to fleasure. Wine was good, 
and women were good, and mirth was good. But youth passed 
— age came, and my heart was empty and sad." 

Another voice said: "■/ gave my life to war. Cities I 
sacked, enemies I crushed; laurels have I won and worn. But 
the sword rusted in my hand. The spiders weave 'twixt me 
and the sun. And in my ears, as I grow old, is the cry of the 
widow and the orphan," 

Another voice said: "/ gave my life to my felloiv-man. 
I pitied his misfortune. I championed his cause. I loved 
the friendless. I hated wrong, and fought tyranny wherever 
I found it. The work has been hard: the way has been sown 
with thorns. But now, as the evening comes. I fold my arms 
in contentment and fear not at all the approaching shades. 
The Master's touch is on my head, and I hear Him say, 
^'Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these., ye did it unto 
Me: " ' 

Thus passed my dream. And I awoke, heavy of heart; for 
I knew Today was as I had dreampt, and that Tom-on'ow 
might never come: that the World as it is. and the World as 
it may be, are as far apart as the real from the ideal. 



The Song of the Bar Room 

A LIVE, let us live. Where is Yesterday ? Lost forever. 
Where's Tomorrow ? It may never come. Today is here. 
Within its fleeting hours, runs the only certainty that you'll 
ever know. Come ! eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow 
you die! 

The chains of Self-restraint are galling — throw them oif ! 
The burden of Duty i^ grievous — fling it down ! The cross of 
Responsibility is crushing — let another bear it ! 

Live for yourself: live for the Noio: live for the lust of 
living. 

Drink ! and forget dull Care. Drink ! and ease the heart- 
ache. Drink ! and drown the passion for the unattainable. 

See how men are drawn to me ! My lights blaze a brilliant 
welcome : I am never too hot, nor too cold. Mirrored Vanity 
smirks in my gilded reflectors ; and no one is ill at ease, in my 
Free-for-all Club. No shrewish wife can tongue-lash you, 
here; no peevish child annoy you with its cries. Leave to 
them the ugliness of your haggard home, and come unto me 
for comfort. Theirs, the cold and the gloom and the lonely 
vigil — yours, the warmth and glow and social joy. 

Clink your glasses, men ! Drink, again, ^"Here's homing.'''' 
'Tis well to toast her here, where begins the trail to the grave 
of Hope. Be jolly; let the place ring with laughter: relate 
the newest story — the story that matches the nude pictures 
on the wall. 

What's that? A dispute, angry oaths, a violent quarrel, 
the crash of overturned chairs, the gleam of steel, the flash 
of guns, the stream of life-blood, the groans of dying men? 

Oh, well, it might have liappened, anywhere. The hearts 
of mothers and fathers, I wrench with pain : the souls of wives, 
I darken in woe. I smite the mansion, and there are wounds 
that gold cannot salve: the hut I invade, and poverty sinks 
into deeper pits. 

I sow and I till, and I reap where I sow, and my harvest 
— is what ? 

Men so brutalized that all of humanity is lost, save the 
physical shape — men reeking with moral filth, stony of heart, 
bestial in vice — men who hear the name of God with a wrath- 
ful stare, or a burst of scornful mirth ; men who listen to the 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 91 

death-rattle of any victim of their greed or their lusts, without 
a -sign of pity. 

And the women, too ! How can I fitly sing of the Woman 
of my harvest-time? Did you ever hear her laugh? It must 
be the favorite music of the damned. Did you ever hear her 
ribald talk? The very sewers might shrink at bearing it 
away. Have you ever heard her libidinous songs? Did you 
ever watch her eyes — those defiant, mocking, hopeless, shame- 
less eyes? 

What warriors have I not vanquished? What statesmen 
have I not laid low ? How many a Burns and Poe have I not 
dragged down from ethereal heights? How many a Sidney 
Carton have I not made to weep for a wasted life? How 
many times have I caused the ermine to be drawn through the 
mud? 

Strong am I — irresistibly strong. 

Samson-like, I strain at the foundations of character; and 
they come toppling down, in irremediable ruin. I am the 
cancer, beautiful to behold, and eating my remorseless way 
into the vitals of the world. I am the pestilence, stalking my 
victims to the cottage door and to the palace gate. No re- 
specter of persons, I gloat over richly-garbed victims no more 
than over the man of the blouse. 

The Church, I empty it : the Jail, I fill it : the Gallows, I 
feed it. From me and my blazing lights, run straight the 
dark roads to the slums, to the prisons, to the bread-lines, to 
the mad-house, to the Potter's Field. 

I undo the work of the School. I cut the ground from 
under Law and Order. I'm the seed-bed of Poverty, Vice and 
(Crime. I'm the Leper who buys toleration, and who has not 
to cry "Unclean!" I'm the Licensed ally-of-Sin. I buy from 
the State, the right to lay dynamite under its foundations. 
For a price, the^^ give me the power to nullify the work of 
law-makers, magistrates and rulers. For a handful of gold, 
I am granted. Letters-of -marque, to sail every human sea and 
prey upon its life-boats. 

Huge battleships they build, casing them triply with hard- 
ened steel; and huge guns they mount on these floating ram- 
parts, until a file of Dreadnaughts line the coast — for what? 
To be ready for perils that may never come. But I give them 
a pitiful purse; and, in return, they issue to me the lawful 
rights to unmask my batteries on every square: and my gims 
play upon humanity, every day and every night, of every 
year. And were my Destroyers spread out upon the Sea. 
thev would cover the face thereof. 



92 



PRO^E MISCELLANIES. 



Around that grief-bowed woman, / threw the weeds of 
widowhood— but I paid for the chance to do it; and they ivfio 
took tmj rnoyiei/ hneir that I would do it. 

To the lips of that desolate child, / brought the wail of 




THE SOULS or WIVES, I DARKEN IX WOE. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 03 

the orphan — but I bought the right to do it; and they loTio 
sold me the right .^ hneio what would come of it. 

Yes ! I inflamed the murderer : I maddened the suicide : 
I made a brute of the husband: I made a diabolical hag out 
of the once beautiful girl: I made a criminal out of the once 
promising boy: I replaced sobriety and comfort, by drunken- 
ness and pauperism — but don't blame Me: hlame those from 
whom I purchased the legal nght to do it. 

No Eoman Emperor ever dragged at his chariot wheels, 
on the day of his Triumph, such multitudes of captives as 
grace my train. Tamerlane's marches of devastation were as 
naught beside my steady advance over the conquered millions. 
The Csesars and the Attilas come and go — comets whose ad- 
vents mean death and destruction, for a season: hut I go on 
forever .^ and I take my ghastly toll from cdl that come to mill. 

In civilization's ocean, I am the builder of the coral reef 
on which the ship goes down: of its citadel, I'm the traitor 
who lets the enemy in : of its progress, I'm the fetter and the 
clog: of its heaven, I'm the hell. 



The Vulture 



LJAS it ever occurred to you that the law of compensation 
* * is illustrated perfectly, in the case of the obscene, ungainly 
buzzard ? 

Think of it a moment. He has no enemies : envy, jealousy, 
unreasoning prejudice, aim no poisoned shafts at him: no 
other bird wants his job, and he himself is contented with it. 

True, he has no friends, but he doesn't appear to need any. 
He IS perfectly independent — and he knows that, as long as 
Death endures, he will have enough to eat. As to wearing- 
apparel, his remain on the free list. He bothers nobody's 
business, and nobody bothers his. Of all creation, he enjoys 
the exclusive luxury of being left alone. 

Look upward into the heavens above you, some sunny day 
of summer — away up yonder, almost out of sight, there is the 
buzzard, circling slowly, steadily, serenely around; the only 
unconcerned living creature that your eyes can perceive. 

The other birds are all uneasy about something. They all 
have enemies. The laAv of their lives is, eternal vigilance. 
They dare not feed, or bathe, or fly, or perch, without scanning 
narroAvly the surroundings, in which may lurk the snake, the 
hawk, the cat. They live in constant fear: they start at every 
sound. Their foes are legion; and after a harassing day of 
continual peril and narrow escapes, the owl, or coon, or 'pos- 
sum, or rat may clutch them where they roost, at night. 

Not so the vulture. He hasn't a care, or a fear on his 

mind. He sails composedly through the cerulean sea, loftily 

secure. 

^* * * * * * * 

There are the beasts of the field — they all have their ene- 
mies, their anxieties, their conflicts. Lion assails lion, tiger 
rends tiger, serpents battle with serpents, the great stolid ox 
shivers with fright when he sees the glittering eyes of the 
snake in the grass; torturing swarms of insects pursue to 
madness the helpless quadruj^eds: the hog devours the kid 
and the lamb; and the wolf, the bear, the fox and the man 
devour the hog. Throughout animated nature, the strife is 
incessant. Nature's law — inexorable and universal and un- 
changeable — makes the weak the food of the strong, makes 
the stomach an insatiable sepulchre, sends the resistless roots 
of life deep down into the fertile soil of Death. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. ^5 

Xot so the buzzard. Nothing feeds on him — he feeds upon 
everything. He doesn't have to work for a living, nor stalk 
his prey, nor swoop hawk-like for his dinner of quail, or his 
supper of spring-chicken. He doesn't have to crawl on his 
belly and serpentine his way over meadow and fallowfield, 
on the hunt for mice, or bird-eggs, or young rabbits, or nest- 
lings. 

No, indeed. Others provide his food. Sailing peacefully, 
evenly, without visible beat of wing, floating with no apparent 
eii'ort, circling in fixed orbit, as though he were himself some 
black-sheep member of the distant constellations — the vulture 
bides his time. He isn't worried about anything. Where his 
next meal will come from, is a matter of no disquieting anx- 
ieties. He knows that it will come — and he sails, round and 
round, in a fathomless, shoreless, radiant sea. 

Consider the ocean and they that dwell within it : can you 
find security and peace and rest? From the tiniest mullet to 
the monsters of the deep, there is war — unending, merciless 
war. Never will you put your eyes upon the fish that isn't 
nervous, watchful, in dread of the enemy. Never will you 
find one that isn't afraid. Everlasting caution, eternal effort, 
ceaseless activity — is the price he pays to live. In those treach- 
erous depths, what battles rage, what massacres take place, 
what ferocities of attack and pursuit, what agonies of flight, 
or defense, there are ! What anguish of futile effort to escape 
there is, when the squadron of sharks encompass the whale, or 
pursue the dreaded swordfish ; and what a ghastly combat that 
is, when the sharks fight over the prey, and wounded sharks 
are beset by sharks ! 

And that which we see among the birds of the air, the 
beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea, is faithfully duplicated 
in the life of man. There is no peace anywhere, nor rest, nor 
security, nor freedom from care and fear. The rivalries of 
business, the inroads of disease, the enmities which luxuriate 
along the path, the dread of tomorrow, the terrors of the 
unknown regions that lie beyond the dim river — ah, who is 
free from thrall? 

Worn out by the battle and the march, the straggler may 
fall by the wayside, crawl into a corner, and seek rest. He 
will not find it. Nobody has ever found it. Those who are 
perfectly sure that they're saved, leave their mansion in the 
New Jerusalem vacant, just as long as .possible. Human 
saints who tell us. most positivel3\ that they will walk the 
golden streets and harp with angels, stick to our dirt-roads 
with piteous tenacity and reveal a singular preference for the 
mundane phonograph and piano. 



96 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

No, brethren ! Let us deal honestly by one another, and 
make the confession that's good for the soul. We are a Jot of 
cowards. We could hardly be anything else. From the cradle 
to the grave, we are surrounded by hobgoblins, imaginary 
terrors and real dangers. A part of our childish training con- 
sisted of elaborate ett'orts to undermine our native good sense. 
Civilized creatures that we are — we frighten our own children, 
destroy their self-confidence, sap their inherent strength of 
mind and character, feed them on Booger-man stories, poison- 
ing the very fountains of thought with fictions and super- 
stitions — and the marvel is, not that so many are permanently 
enfeebled or enslaved, but that anybody ever emancipates him- 
self. So ingrained becomes the fear of the dark and the mys- 
terious, that the bravest of men will quake, in uncontrollable 
panic, if, at night, he hears sounds that are differenti from 
anything he ever heard before — sounds that he cannot connect 
with any ordinary occurrence. He immediately imagines some 
nameless horror, and his hair stands on end. He isn't afraid 
of any human being, he isn't afraid to die, but he is afraid of 
that unearthly sound, because it has aroused the slumbering 
cowardice that was injected into him by ghost-stories when he 
was a child ! 

So it happens, that while most people who have been sick, 
and who have gradually weakened, are not afraid to die — let 
sudden death confront anybody, saint or sinner, and you will 
see that the grimiest log cabin is passionately preferred to the 
best of those mansions in the skies. 

Yes, we are all cowards : if not afraid of one thing, we are 
of something else; and much of it is due to the wretched sys- 
tem of dealing with the child. 

And so, when I seek a picture of repose, I look upward, and 
gaze upon the buzzard, peacefully engaged in drawing invis- 
ible circles in the upper air. The hubbub in the marts of trade 
are nothing to him. The fierce rivalries of men atfect him not. 
Is the w^orld at peace? His rations will not be cut off, or 
shortened. Are the nations at war? So much the better for 
him. Is it a year of bountiful harvests? He will not go 
unfed. Does famine smite the people? It has no terrors for 
him. 

The storm comes up from far aAvay, and thunderclouds 
obscure the sun : he either rides wath the gale as if he loved it, 
or soars above the tumult, and lets it pass below. 

Some day you will hear a rush of sound, the volume start- 
lingly strong, and you will look up in surprise — it is the buz- 
zard having his fun, apparently, by taking a headlong dive 
into space. So then this unclean, unsociable, isolated bird 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 97 

actually possesses a sense of enjoyment, in addition to his 
unlimited fund of solemn self-conceit. 

Poor old weather-beaten mariner of the skies ! Tireless 
swimmer of the invisible waves I Lone sentry of the trackless 
beat ! You are not pretty, and you probably smell bad, and 
you eat in a way that we despise — although we daily devour 
dead things ourselves — you have never had a write-up., by one 
who appreciated your advantages and s^mipathized with your 
limitations. 

Well, you've got one, at last, such as it is. 



The Wine Cup 



1 T IS a warrior whom no victory can satisfy, no ruin satiate. 
* It pauses at no Rubicon to consider, pitches no tents at 
night-fall, goes into no quarters for winter. It conquers amid 
the burning plains of the South, where the phalanx of Alex- 
ander halted in mutiny. It conquers amid the snow-drifts of 
the North, where the grand Army of Napoleon found its wind- 
ing sheet. Its monuments are in every burial ground. Its 
badges of triumph are the weeds which mourners wear. Its 
song of victory is the wail that was heard in Ramah : "Rachel 
crying for her children, and weeping because they are not." 

It never buries the hatchet : its temple of Janus never closes 
its doors. No dove of peace ever carries its message; in its 
hand, is never the olive branch. It sends no flag of truce, and 
receives none : its wounded are left where they fall, and its dead 
bury their dead. Every citadel that it storms, it devastates; 
and in every charge which it makes its cry is, "No Quarter." 

Those who fall before its onset, die deaths of shame; and 
they go down to dishonored graves to which love can bring no 
willing tribute of flowers, and over which pride can rear no 
enduring monument. To its prisoners it grants no exchange, 
holds them to no ransom, but clutches them fast, in a captivity 
that is worse than death, and which ends only at the grave. 

The sword is mighty, and its bloody traces reach across 
time, from Nineveh to Gravelotte, from Marathon to Gettys- 
burg. Yet mightier is its brother, the wine-cup. I say 
"brother," and history says "brother." Castor and Pollux 
never fought together in more fraternal harmony. David and 
Jonathan never joined in more generous rivalry. Hand in 
hand, they have come down the centuries, and upon every scene 
of carnage, like vulture and shadow, they have met and 
feasted. 

Yea : a pair of giants, but the greater is the wine-cup. The 
sword has a scabbard, and is sheathed; has a conscience, and 
becomes glutted with havoc ; has pity, and gives quarter to the 
vanquished. The wine-cup has no scabbard and no conscience, 
its appetite is a cancer which grows as you feed it; to pity, it 
is deaf; to suffering, it is blind. 

The sword is the Lieutenant of Death, but the wine-cup is 
his Captain; and if ever they come home to him from their 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 99 

wars, bringing their trophies, boasting of their achievements, 
I can imagine that Death, their master, will meet them with 
garlands and song, as the maidens of Judea met Saul and 
David. But as he numbers the victims of each, his psean will 
be : ''The sword is my Saul, who has slain his thousands ; but 
the wine-cup is my David, who has slain his tens of thousands.'' 



Toward the Light 



WHEN SIR WALTER SCOTT was lying on his death- 
bed, he was' very cahn and resigned; he had always been 
a kind-hearted man; had always been a gentle man, — and so 
when he came to die, he was not afraid. He had worked 
wonders in his way. The tireless hand, pnshing the pen, which, 
in his youth, a neighbor had seen throgh the window that 
morning in Edinburgh, had Avritten on, and written on, until 
the books had grown into a library, and all the ^orld was 
reading — even as it does today. 

He had toiled much, enjoyed much, suffered much, — and 
the last time that the old literateur had gone to the polls, he 
had been hooted by his neighbors, his vote having been antag- 
onistic to theirs. 

Then he went back to Abbotsford, sorrowing; and soon 
afterwards laid him down to die. 

His son-in-law, Lockhart, an author of world-wide fame 
himself, was a different sort of man. Bitter and cynical, 
he had slight capacity for friendship; appeared to take 
a delight in giving poisoned wounds; had numberless feuds,, 
and no reconciliations; had few intimates and few friends; 
and faced, with inflexibility and scorn, a host of enemies. 

As the misanthropic Lockhart leaned over the death-bed^ 
the dying Scott said to him: 

^''Be a GOOD niariy my dear; he a GOOD man. It is the^ 
only thing that can give you comfort^ when you come to Ue 
herey 

Not riches, not place and power, not fame, not great deeds 
of any sort, — only the good works, they alone, can soften the 
pillow for the dying head. ■ 

Sent into this terribly complex life, by the unknown and 
unknowable, we are cursed bj^ the universal sin, and must 
struggle^ if we reach the light. Something within us tells us 
that it is better to do right, better to be honest and true, better 
to resist evil than to embrace it. 

We can not help the occasional fall, — we are just human, 
with hearts that are desperatelv wicked. But we must not stay 
down. That's the point,— T7£^ MUST NOT STAY DOWN. 

When I was a young man, twenty years old, I entered my 
first political fight, a petty local affair. With all the hot zeal 



PROSE MISCELLANIES 101 

of inexperienced youth, i worked for victory. Our side got 
the worst whipping you ever saw. Awfully cut up about it, 
I was sitting on the sidewalk, filled with despair, believing that 
I was ruined. An older man, seeing my distress and sympa- 
thizing with it, said to me: 

''Rise, and come againP'' 

Immediately, the load was lightened, and the fit of blues 
soon passed away. 

Ever since then, that word of encouragement has never 
ceased to be a benefit to me. After every one of my many 
defeats and falls, there would come the momentary collapse. 
"What's the use? Fate is against you. You are attempting 
the impossible. You don't amount to a row of pins, anyway. 
Tender your sword. You are down and out." 

So whispers the evil spirit, and. it almost gets me some- 
times — but not quite. 

Always I hear the words of George McCord (dead these 
many years ago), '■'■DonH give way to it. RISE, AND COME 
AGAINP So, I brush the dust off, bandage the wounds, and 
go at it again. 

When I come to face my Father, I want to be able to say 
to Him : 

"Father, take pity on me — it was You who made me just 
what I was. With "all my raging passions and disfiguring 
imperfections. You sent me into the wicked world, where there 
was so much that I could not understand. I know that I've 
sinned, deeply and repeatedly, but, oh, my Father! I did try 
to please You. Often guilty of wrongdoing, I strove ever to 
get right, and stay right. I've done the very best I could — 
to be adjust man. a high-minded man, a pure man, a good man." 

If, at the end of the chapter, I can still' say that,—^^ I can 
up to now, — I won't be the least bit afraid of Him. I know, in 
my inmost soul, that He will forgive me the sins that I could 
not help committing, and that He will not doom me with His 
eternal, implacable frown. 



The Country Wife 

(An effort was being made to secure an appro pnation of 
$10,000 for the purpose of sending city women, to improve the 
wives of country folk.) 

AS TO asking the aid of the Georgia Legislature to make 
■^ better wives and mothers of the country women of this 
State: I have rarely known a subject more difficult to discuss 
patiently within the bounds of moderation. There are thou- 
sands of devoted and absolutely admirable waves and mothers 
in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages, and it gives 
me pleasure and pride to testify to the fact; but if you ask me 
to carry you to the home of the true wife and the true mother, 
one Avho loses herself entirely in the existencei of her husband 
and children, one who is the first to rise in the morning, and 
the last to retire at night, one who is always at her post of duty, 
and the one who carries upon her shoulders the burdens of 
both husband and children, one who is keeper of the household 
and the good angel of it, utterly unselfish, happy in making 
others happy, with no thought of seeing her name in the 
papers, no thought of fashionable pleasure, perfectly content 
in quiet home life, in which she does nobody harm and every- 
body much good, taking as many thorns as she can from the 
pathway of her husband and strewing it with as many roses 
as possible, strengthening him by her inspiration as he goes 
forward to fight the battles of life, smoothing the pillow upon 
which he rests his tired head when he comes home, tenderl}^ 
rearing the boys and girls who will in turn go away from the 
door some day for the last time — the boy to become a good 
soldier in life's continuous warfare, and the girl to become 
some ardent suitor's wife and to be to him what her mother 
has been to her father: and who, when all toils are done and 
her strength is departing, will sit calmly in the doorway, 
watching the setting sun, with a serene smile upon her face, 
and never a fear in her heart — ask me to find where this 
woman lives, where this type is to be found, and I will make 
a bee-line for the countrv. 



The Path to Glory 

IN SIR WILLIAM FRASER'S book, "Disraeli and His 
^ Day," we find this passage: 

"Like men who have a real knowledge and appreciation of 
true poetr}^, Disraeli was a gi-eat admirer of Gray. He said 
to me with great fervour, 'Byron visited Greece ; he walked on 
Olympus; he drank from Castalia: there was everything to 
inspire him. Gray never was in Greece in his life; yet he 
wrote finer lines than Byron: 

" 'Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep : 
Isles that crown the Aegean deep; 
Fields that cool Illyssus laves, 
Or where Mseander's amber waves 
In Jhigering labyrinths creep.'' 

"He pronounced the last line yery slowly. 

"On another occasion, I asked him which he admired most 
of the stanzas of 'Gray's Elegy.' He replied, 'That will re- 
quire a good deal of thinking.' He added, 'You have made 
up your mind?' 'Yes.' 

ps i;. V^'The boast of Heraldry; the pomp of Power: 
i jA^\ ' And all that Beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
\ 3 Await alike the inevitable hour : 

The paths of Glory lead but to the Grave." 

I have often heard this stanza from Gray's "Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard," used for the purpose of discouraging 
ambition. In my judgment, the poet had no such intention. 
He meant merely to give expression to that thought which the 
Romans had in mind when they placed in the chariot of the 
conqueror, on the day of his triumph, an attendant whose duty 
it was to repeat from time to time in the ear of the victor, 
"But remember that you are mortal." The same thought was 
in the mind of the Orientals, who dragged a mummy case 
through the banquet hall where revelers were feasting. 

Properly understood, there is in all this no discouragement 
to honorable ambition. True, the paths of glory lead but to the 
grave, but whither leads any other path? The law-giver, after 
all his toil and all the splendor of the civic crown, sinks to 

4pm ir3 



104 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

the dust ; but equally so does the thoughtless, aimless boor, who 
had no care beyond his pig-stye. 

The warrior, after the battles have been fought and won, 
after the dash of onset, the thrill of contest, the hot wine of 
triumph, sleeps coldly and alone; but equally dismal is the 
fate of the coward cur who wounded himself with an imag- 
inary bullet, shirked the fight, and lived, the scorn of man- 
kind. 

There was once an Indian Chief, celebrated in the moun- 
tains of North Georgia. Some one asked him the way to his 
home. The red man haughtily answered, "I go home along 
the mountain tops." 

To each one of us comes the hour when we meet 

"The Shadow cloaked from head to foot, 
Who bears the key of all the creeds." 

To me, it seems far more noble, far more inspiring, to have 
the inevitable meeting somewhere in the pathway that leads us 
home along the mountain tops. 



Is It Worth the Price? 

THE WORLD is full of young men who are panting to 
throw oti' the restraints of youth and enter into the battle 
of life. In every class-room, there is at least one boy who 
nurses the profound belief that he is ''the coming man," and 
that he will open a new chapter in the book of human achieve- 
ment. 

In the Court-house he will win cases which Toombs, or Ben 
Butler, or Daniel Webster, would have lost. 

In medicine, he will cure where Pasteur, or Koch, or Battey 
would have killed. 

In science, he will make Hubboldt and Spencer and Huxley 
and Darwin appear pigmies. 

As an Orator, he will spell-bind, where Phillips or Prentiss 
would have put to sleep. As a Statesman, he will begin where 
Gladstone left off. As a Warrior, the first "round" in his lad- 
der of glory will be an Ansterlitz or a Jena. 

When I'was at college, this "Coming Man," was in every 
class. In fact, there w^ere two or three of him in every class. 
And, of course, I was one of him, myself. 

That was long ago, — so long ago that when I met one of 
"the coming men" of these college days a few weeks since. I 
found himas gray and as subdued as a still, drizzly day in 
October. He was traveling about, selling a new edition of an 
excellent Cookbook. 

This feverish, desperate contest for Fame and Wealth and 
Position — is the reward worth the labor? 

Is there any "reward" at all, in the success achieved, which 
brightens the home, gladdens the heart, and fills the soul's 
desire with satisfaction? 

In the hub-bub talk about you, which the world calls 
Fame, how many of the talkers are men whose good opinion 
is of actual value? And how many of thes<^ worthiest of peo- 
ple are citizens whose good opinion is so indispensable to you, 
that you would work your legs off and your heart out to 
get it? 

AVhat is that good opinion going to do for you, that you 
should turn your days into days of drudgery and your nights 
into sleepless vigils of anxious thought ? What are you going 
to get out of it, that repays you for the health and the peace 
and the happiness it costs ? 



106 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

Napoleon believed that Fame was the only immortality. 
He had no belief in the soul. 

Yet, after toiling so hard over his books that he stunted his 
growth; after reaching supreme power by such a career of 
blood, hyporcisy, selfishness, genius, labor, lies and good luck, 
as the world never saw before; after carrying his triumphant 
eagles from Cairo to Moscow, he had the mortification to learn 
that there were people living, even in France, who had never 
heard of him. 

Where there is one man in the world today who has any 
clear idea as to who Napoleon was, there are forty thousand 
who do not. Once upon a time a very prominent burgher 
of the town where I live, — a man of eminent respectability 
and intelligence, — closed a harangue I had been making to 
him on the subject of Napoleon's greatness, by asking me, 
with the utmost seriousness, if Napoleon was dead. 

What was there in the splendid fame he won, which made it 
easy foe Henry Grady to give uj) his young life? 

What is there in it that Bill Nye should work himself to 
death — killing himself to supply the public with fun? 

Where is the recompense which repays to the slave of am- 
bition for the loss of the sunny daj^s in the fields, the myriad 
voices of the autumn woods, and the leisure hours at the fire- 
side of a happy home? 

Shall there be no rest for weary feet, in this mad race for 
Fame and Wealth and Position? Shall there be no furlough 
from this all-devouring army? 

Shall there never come a time when the rainy day is mine, 
and the long, sweet hours in the quiet library? 

Shall the fever of pursuit so entirely enslave us that there 
shall be no hour which belongs to friendship, none belonging 
to solitude and reflection, none, to memory, and to the sacred 
teachings of Regret? 

A great man once said to me, "We are not judged by char- 
acter, but by reputation." 

Just so : and perhaps that's the A^ery reason why it is worth 
while to stress the fact that the reputation is not worth the 
price we pay for it — for surely the real value of the man is his 
character, and not his re]>utation. 

Get all the fame that flows from a good life. Such fame is 
as healthy as the light that pours from a star — as unfeverish 
as the breath of a I'ose, or tliQ song of a bird. Such a fame is 
but the halo that follows sterling worth. 

Get all the money you honestly can. You owe it to your- 
self and those, who depend on you to bring the vessel into port, 
if you can — safe from the storm. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES, 107 

The man who says he loves being poor, is a liar, and he 
takes yon for a fool— else he wonldn't tell yon so. 



you 



'win Position in life, if yon feel that Duty calls for 

No man should under-rate the importance of Fame, of 
Wealth, or of Position :— but the man who pays his health and 
his happiness and his life for them, pays too much. 



The Late 



"DEADER, did you ever run over the pages of a Magazine, 

scanning items of news, dipping into heated controversies, 
pausing at the love-stories, as a humming bird would at a 
flower, and suddenly find yourself at the last page, where the 
editor chronicles the list of "'The Late?" 

Who are "The Late?" They are the men who have acted 
their part, and have left the stage. They are the dead. Last 
month, they Avere full of life — working, quarrelling, loving, 
hating, scheming, dreaming, planning for indefinite futures, 
as though all Time w^as theirs. They read the Magazine last 
month, just as you are doing this month. They scanned the 
news, dipped into the discussions, laughed at the jokes, lingered 
with the lovers, and sighed over the chronicles of "The Late." 
Then they closed the book — and now their life-books are 
closed; and they join the lists of "The Late," which you and 
I are, this month, to read and to sigh over. 

How sad it all is. 
Last month here was a scholar, delving deep into the hidden 
lore of granite rocks, of dust laden manuscript, of ruined tem- 
ples, of monumefital inscriptions leading back into hoary ages 
of the Past, — and now his nerveless hands are crossed, and his 
eager feet hurry no longer after knowledge. Last month he 
was a palpitating actuality, all ablaze with hope and purpose: 
this month he heads the list of "The Late." 

On the other hand, there was an author, one who had long 
been suitor to fame: one who had toiled and fought grim pov- 
erty and cold neglect. Year after year, he had struggled 
upward to the light — falling back again with many a sickening 
disappointment. 

But at last, as the silver threads began to streak his head, 
a sudden sun-burst of Fame was his. The storm lifted, and 
the haven Avas there. The wilderness ended, and the labor of 
travel was over. Poverty fled, and golden ducats rained. Neg- 
lect vanished and the world crowded upon him with plaudits, 
with the eager offerings of universal Fame. 

All this was last month. Your whole heart went out to 
the storm-tossed mariner Avho had so joyfully made port. Your 
hands clapped in unison with all the others for the brave sol- 
dier who had at last won his fight. 

This Avas last montli. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 100 

Where is the author now? Dead. You will read his name 
m the list of "The Late." His Fame still rings around the 
world, but, alas ! his ears are too dull to hear. You may hand 
him ever so many crowns of laurel, ever so many wreaths of 
flowers; his closed eyes cannot see, his frozen hands cannot 
hold. 

Yonder, again, was the statesman, the politician, if you like. 
Last month, what a robust figure was his ! How he bustled, 
how he shoved, hoAv he aspired, how he intrigued ! With what 
immense vitality did he strive to lift his voice above other 
voices, his head above other heads ! What schemes did fill his 
busy brain ! Throughout all the walks of life there was not a 
man more active, more resolute, more full of pluck and ambi- 
tion. He clashed against his foes with a force that made the 
arena ring. He would shiver a spear with any challenger who 
struck his shield. Ardently he sought honors, fiercely he com- 
batted opposition, tirelessly he served friends — hoping that 
they would serve him, in turn. 

That was last month. All eyes followed him as he gal- 
lantly rode down the lists, armed, from golden spear to plume- 
dressed helm, seeking in honorable strife to bear away the 
prize, and live a space m the huzzas of brave men, in the smiles 
of lovely women. 

That was last month, and now, it is all over. Death struck 
him as he rode. The lance fell from his hand, his good steed 
gallops on, riderless. The brave Knight will seek the prize no 
more. His name appears on the list of '"The Late." 

And so it all goes: — sad, heart-breakingly sad. And it 
cannot be helped. We have trodden down the dead of last 
month : the living will tread us down, next month. 

Preach peace as much as you will, and preach love and 
charity. May their kingdom come. May they rule the world. 
They do not rule it now. 

However much we wish to disbelieve it, the race is mostly 
to the swift, the battle to the strong. 

The strong nation oppresses the weaker nation; the strong 
man, the weaker man. 

You hold your place in life, as in a battle-field. You hold 
it by being able to hold it. When your strength fails, you 
retreat. 

Bismarck grows old — and is forced off the stage: Glad- 
stone decays, and the reins si:)urn his palsied hands. 

I look over the list of "The Late," and I read the name of 
one I knew. Was he my foe? Was there enmity between us? 

Alas, how pale and worthless the feud now appears. My 
passion is all gone. His white hand seems to wave me a flag 



110 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

of truce. Death obliterates his fauls (if indeed they were his 
faults and not my prejudices,) and I recall whatever was 
manly and strong and admirable in him. I review our differ- 
ences, mourn over the estrangement, and grieve that malice 
ever arose between us. The way so short, the time for joy so 
brief, human ills of the inevitable sort so numerous, that it 
seems to me now a supreme pity that we wilfully added to the 
thorns which beset the journey. 

Was "The Late" my friend? Was the dead man one who 
had loved me, sympathized with me, stood by my side in some 
hour of danger come to my relief, when I was friendless, poor, 
and down-hearted? 

Then indeed what terrible words are these, "The Late." I 
cannot see them through the mist of tears. I see only the white 
face of my friend. I think only of those folded hands, that 
loyal heart which beats no more. 

Eeader, some day our names will go into the columns of 
"The Late." The list is there, and our names will be written 
into the blank, after a while. 

To us it will not matter at all what the world may think, 
or may say, when it reads our names in the list. We will be 
at rest them — so far as the world is concerned. Love cannot 
reach us — nor malice, thank God ! Misconstruction, envy, 
hatred, can hurt us no more. It matters not what the world 
will say, except in so far as the world speaks the Truth ! 

While we lived, the False may have worked us enormous 
harm. It can never harm us again. The True will reign 
supreme. 

While we lived, we found lies to be much more terrible 
things than the Sunday-school books (and others) had pre- 
pared us to believe. We found that lies had power to damn, 
so far as the world was concerned. We found that the people 
were ignorant, credulous, easily duped, and falsely led. We 
found that a lie, repeated every day, became practically the 
truth. We found that the public scarcely knew the whole 
truth about anything, and that the people were designedly 
kept weltering in lies, and half-truths (which were more de- 
ceptive than lies) in order that the "powers that be" could 
continue to misrule. We found that the world had become so 
wedded by custom to this system, that it was hardly possible 
to tell the people the whole truth upon any subject whatever. 

But all the while you felt that a lie was a despicable thing 
— a thing preordained to death and damnation. Deep down in 
your soul, you felt that there was finally no hope of your land- 
ing your feet on the eternal rocks, unless you fought lies, and 
championed Truth. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. Ill 

Did you do it? — That is the question which then assumes 
terrible importance. 

Can it be truly said that you loved Truth and Eight, 
Justice and Mercy? Can it be truly said that your heart 
turned always to humanity, and strove ever for better things ! 
Can it be said that Duty, as you understood it, was your gos- 
pel, from first to last, through good report and evil, through 
cloudy days and fair? 

Or, did you bend and twist, here and there, first one way 
and then the other, true to nobody, true to no conception of 
right, fawning upon wrong to get a part of the fruits thereof, 
adding your voice to the clamor of Ignorance and Superstition, 
and Prejudice, and Evil, in order that you might be one of a 
dominant majority? Did you lay down your manhood at the 
feet of Error, knowing it to be Error, and join in the carnival 
of Wrong, simply because the greater numbers were on that 
side? 

Did you put your soul into bondage knowing that it was a 
Falsehood you obeyed? 

These, and these only, will be the vital questions, when we 
shall have left "the quick" and joined "the dead." 

God pity us all! 

And may Truth, the handmaiden of the Most High, claim 
us as votaries, in that dread day when we shall have been 
added to the hosts of "The Late'." 



The Old Packet Boat by the James 

TpHE train was slowing down for Lynchburg; passengers 
were rising from their seats, getting ready to leave the 
cars; my companion leaned over me and pointed to a distant 
object on the far bank of the James, and said: "See that old 
boat up there under the trees? General Jackson's body was 
carried in that from Lynchburg to Lexington." 

In the swift view^ of it which I got, as the train carried us 
on, it appeared to be a low, irregidar hut, squatting there dis- 
consolately, dilapidated and forlorn. 

And that was the hearse which bore toward its last resting 
place, "at Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia," the corps of 
one of the greatest soldiers the world has known. 

The instantaneous photograph of the old boat, which that 
fleeting glimpse of it made on my mind, will never fade. For 
it fired the long train of memory, and the whole of "Stone- 
wall" Jackson's phenomenal career seemed to form the back- 
ground of the mental picture of the old boat. 

His early life of poverty, orphanage and disease; his in- 
domitable determination to get on ; his record at West Point, 
where his angularity and industry were his most noticeable 
traits of character: then his services in the Mexican war, where 
he was somewhat of a rollicking officer, brave as his sword, full 
of dash, but also full of fun. Quartered in the ""Halls of the 
Montezumas," he threw himself into the social pleasures which 
folloAved so soon upon the close of the fighting. No officer 
in the army was fonder of the society of the beautiful Mexican 
ladies; and in order that he might the better enjoy their com- 
pany, he mastered the Spanish tongue. Then came the service 
in the Seminole war, in which there were no laurels to be 
gained. 

Professor in the Virginia Military Institute, Jackson was 
regarded as an oddity, and nothing more. The boys played 
all sorts of pranks off on him, and the Faculty held him as an 
almost negligible quantity. Because he was so strict, angidar, 
and rigid, Jackson was not popular with the gay young fel- 
lows who came there to loiter their way through to gi-aduation. 
At school he had been nicknamed "Fool Tom Jackson"; and 
now that he was a teacher of boys, the same tendency to pro- 
voke ridicule clung to him. On the drill ground the pieces 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



113 



of artillery, in default of horses, were drawn by the students: 
to tease and annoy Jackson, these artillery teams would pre- 
tend to get frightened, during the maneuvers, and would ''run 
away" with the cannon. 

When I was at Lexington a few years ago, a member of the 
Faculty who was attached to the College at the time Jackson 
was a "teacher there, told me, as an evidence of Jackson's self- 
control, that on one occasion, when a student who nursed a 
grudge against the strict Professor, threw a brick-bat at him, 
from behind, as he was taking his walk in the grounds, Jack- 
son did ont so much as turn his head. 



ii 


iiliiyi^ 


•1 


m 


i» 1 .V- T 


p^»i^,fs^ 






m 

1 


■ii 






^..•*« 



THE OLD PACKET BOAT BY THE JAMEs 



This gentleman also told me that the Faculty of the Insti- 
tute were considering the matter of dispensing with the chair 
filled by Jackson, when the Civil War broke out, and the angu- 
lar Professor was called to the field. 

They showed me the very commonplace house which was 
Jackson's home in Lexington, and it aroused in me emotions 
which no palace on this earth would stir: — a very modest 
house, with an ugly location, — for its front wall is flush with 
the sidewalk, — standing on a side street, near the centre of a 
town which occupies a site of great natural beauty. 

And that was the "garden of Brienne" of Stonewall Jack- 
son ! The place where he buried himself in study, standing at 
his desk, Avithout book or paper, concentrating his thought in- 
tensely upon- all that he had read during the study-hours of the 



114 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

day. Then, when the clock struck nine — not before it began to 
-strike, and not until the ninth stroke had sent its record- voice 
to the past. — did the rigid student throw off the shackles of dis- 
cipline, and begin to romp with the children, on the floor, or 
mingle in the light and familiar conversation of the household. 

For the odd Professor, whom nobody understood, but who 
was thoroughly respected by every sober-minded person that 
knew him, had somehow or other won the heart of a beautiful 
young woman, had made her his wife, and was now a beloved 
member of her family, 

Margaret J. Preston is known to almost every one who 
reads, but her sister Eleanor is remembered by the few, only, 
who know that it Avas she whose loveliness of person and 
character completely subdued the shy and complex character 
of the Professor, converted him to her own religious faith, 
gave him the hrst inclination toward becoming devout, and by 
her untimely death, after one year of domestic happiness, gave 
him a sorrow that darkened the remainder of his life. 



To me, ''Stonewall'' Jackson seems to belong to the class 
of Havelock and "Chinese" Gordon. Like those great soldiers, 
he was a religious fanatic. Like them, he was a mystic. Had 
he been made Commander-in-Chief, in some war fought for 
the sake of religion, he would probably have developed into 
the Greatest of Great Captains. As it was, I see in Jackson, 
as in Lee, a curious occasional apathy. Somehow, I get the 
idea that, while both were absolutely loyal to the Southern 
Confederacy, unselfish and unsparing of themselves in the 
service, neither Jackson nor Robert E. Lee had that suprenve 
confidence, that whole-hearted passion of purpose, which is so 
essential to success. 

Both Jackson and Lee were at their best when repelling 
invasion. The presence of Northern troops in the Valley, 
aroused all the lion in Stonewall Jackson, and he put forth the 
terrible energy which made that campaign immortal. The 
approach of the Northern hosts upon Richmond had a similar 
effect upon General Lee; he rose to the crisis and was the 
Great Captain — some say the greatest of all the soldiers pro- 
duced by the Anglo-Saxon race. But once the supreme danger 
to native land had passed, neither Lee nor Jackson pressed 
their advantages home, with the ruthless purpose of destroying 
the enemy., as each would have done, had, they been f,ghting any 
other people save their own flesh and Mood. 

The blundering, disastrous pursuit of McClellan, as he 
fell back to the James, after the fighting around- Richmond, 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 115 

shows this. The Southern army would have been immensely 
better off had it simply kept in sight of the enemy, compelling 
him to continue the retreat by threatenmg his flank and his 



base of supplies. I fact, Gen. E. P Alexander, m his most 
valuable book of Keminiscences, describes the conduct ot btone- 
wall Jackson, during the retreat of McClellan ma way that 
leaves no doubt of the great commander's lack of mental en- 
ergy during the pursuit. . , ^ , x i j. j 
The o-entlemanlv manner in which General Lee conducted 




GEN. ROBERT E. LEE. 



his operations each time that he invaded l^e enemy s country, 
proves my analysis to be correct. Think of Wei mgton, or 
Blucher, or Napoleon, or Marlborough, scolding^ his troops, 
furiously, for taking apples from the orchards of the foe, or 
for making a campfire out of his fence-rails! 

An old soldier, who now lives at Sugar Valley, Georgia 
published a letter in my paper, in which he told how General 
Lee, in high wrath, called him a "thief," a "disgrace to the 
army," and other "hard names," because the soldier, hungry 
and tired, had taken some fruit from an orchard, and was 
trying to satisfy his hunger with it. This was during the m- 
vasion of Pennsylvania. t ..o fl,a<- 

It was the highest degree creditable to Kobert E. Lee that 



116 PROISE MISCELLANIES. 

he would order one of his men to "put that rail back on that 
fence," — but is that the spirit which wins, in war? It ought 
to be, I grant you, — but is it ? There used to be much of that 
noble spirit in the days of Chivalry, and in the days when the 
French officers were supposed to say to the foe, "Gentlemen 
of the English Guard, we never fire first." 

But whatever remains of that spirit were left in Europe, 
the era of Napoleon swept away ; and' ever since he scandal- 
ized the decorous Austrian officers, by fighting them in any 
way that meant most damage to thern^ — rules or no rules, 
— the practice has been the reverse of chivalrous. The ruth- 
lessness of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Rosecrans, was most 
ungentlemanly, — but most effective. 

Had our West Point generals waged war upon the North 

with the same destructive fory, the resolt of the conflict might 

have been different. 

******* 

And the old boat crouches on the bank of the river, slowly 
settling down into ruin. Thirsty, feverish, money-loving 
Commercialism hurries by, giving the lonely derelict a merely 
casual glance. And yet the sight of it calls up so much to 
those who knew the past. 

I close my eyes and hear again the peal of thunder and see 
the distant lightning, as Stonewall Jackson crashes against the 
Union flank at Chancellorsville. I hear the "ten thousand 
whippoorwills" of whom Gen. Jeb Stuart spoke afterwards; 
I see the Confederates struggle forward in the dense scrub 
woods; the Federals scatter in confusion and Howard's Corps 
is annihilated ; the rapid advance of Jackson's men has broken 
their own formation and there is a perilous confusion; the 
enemy, in a desperate attempt at salvation, plants a battery 
'and shells the turnpike; a momentary halt is made by the 
Confederates, and Jackson, caught up in the concentration of 
a great purpose, rides too far, too far to the front; with all 
his might he is pushing around to the enemy's rear, to cut him 
off from the United States ford, and take his entire army 
prisoners, or destroy it ! 

Alas, he rides too far into the darkness, — no picket line 
protects him from the enemy and he comes within their musket 
range, is fired upon, gallops back toward his own men — who 
have orders to fire on cavalry and who do not know that 
Stonewall has ridden beyond them — is fired upon by his men 
and is carried, here and yonder, by his frenzied horse, is at 
length lifted from the saddle to the ground, where he lies 
beneath a tremendous cannonade of the enemy, M'ith a drawn 
face, white with pain, turned up to the moon. 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. !!'<' 

"Mv God! it's General Jackson!" cried a soldier march- 
ino- by: and in a few days tlie heartbroken wail rang through- 
out the South, "My God! Stonewall /ackson is dead. 

Whether Gen. Jackson assumed that a picket line had been 
thro'^out in front, or whether his act m ridmg forward was 
nddent to his absorption in his great purpose, can never be 
known During the days of patient sulfering which preceded 
hi diath- he death of'a resigned, undoubtmg Christian-4ie 
made no effort to account for what had occurred. A pathetic 
de nil however, is that those who saw him just- after he was 
lit reMrtha Us expression was one. of utter astomshment 
But'the iron lips closed down and he saicl nothing. Nothing? 
Nothing about the calamity that had hMlen hrm. 

But when Gen. Pender expressed a doubt of being able to 
hold his advance, an exposed and temporarily unsupported 
position Jackson'L order came, prompt, stern, emphatic : 
^ ''you must hold, your ground, General Pender/ You must 

'%!ZJ^s S Wlod, unable to stand, -ked w^^, 
the soldierly instinct and heroic spirit were masters to the end. 

"^If r^£^^^s.s, Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson 
woidd not cnve ground to thQ enemy, was immovable and con- 
fito when thf wrecks of broken brigades were all around 
him and L won the title by which his people Preier ^o call 
him' It was fitting that his last order on the field of battle 
sCdd have been just what it was: 'To. must hold your 

^Ten f^der was a brave officer, and Gen Lee's official 
.epStof'^StLellorsville makes n.^^^^ 

gallantry displayed by him, m the battle on the day attei 
Jackson's fall. ^ * * • 

Thei*e never was a sublimer funeral given to any National 

m'tbursts of grief that betokened a ""'J^^'.^" '^;^„,,f ^^e 
found and unobtrusive piety, his dramatic and tragic fall m 



118 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



the hour of glorious victory, his fortitude in suffering, his 
touching submission to the will of God. 

H: $ 41 H: ^ :>: ^ 

I turn to the Diary kept bv Margaret J. Preston. The 
date is May 5th, (1863.) 

Here is the entry : 

'"Today brings news of a terrible battle — but no particu- 
lars; only that Gen. Frank Paxton is killed, Jackson and A. 
P. Hill wounded." 




STONEAVALL JACKSON. 



»"May 7th: Another day of awful suspense. Not a soli- 
tary letter or person has come from the army to Lexington; 
only a telegram from Governor Letcher, announcing that Cap- 
tain Greenlee Davidson is killed; his body and Paxton 's are 
expected tomorrow. What fearful times we live in!" 

"FridaA^, 8th. Today we hear that Gen. Jackson's arm is 
amputated and that he is wounded in the right hand. How 
singular that it should have been done through mistake by a 
volley from his oAvn men. It happened at midnight Satur- 
day." 

"May 10th, Sabbath : This afternoon Dr. White attempted 
to hold service: but iust as he was beginning, the mail arrived, 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 119 

and so great was the excitement, and so intense the desire for 
news that he was obliged to dismiss the congregation. We 
only hear of one more death among the Lexington boys, young 
Imboden. Several wounded ; this is much better than we had 
dared to hope." , . , , 

''May 12th, Tuesday : Last night I sat at his desk writing 
a letter to General Jackson, urging him to come up and stay 
with us, as soon as his wound would permit him to move. / 
went downstairs this morning, with the [^iter m my hand 
and was met by the overtohelming news that JACK SO IS W A^ 
DEAD! 

A telet^ram had been sent to Col. Smith by a courier 
from Staunton. Doubt was soon thrown upon this by the ar- 
rival of someone from Eichmond, who said he had left when 
the telegram did, and there was no such rumor m Eichmond. 
So between alternate hope and fear, the day passed. It was 
saddened by the bringing home of General Paxtons remains, 
and by his funeral. At five this evening the startling con- 
firmation comes-Jackson is indeed dead ! My heart overflows 
with sorrow. The grief in this community is intense; every- 
body is in tears. What a release from his weary two years 
warfare. To be released into the blessedness and peace ot 
heaven' . How fearful the loss to the Confederacy! 

The people made an idol of him and God has rehuked them. 
No more ready soul has ascended to the throne than was his. 
Never have I seen a human being as thoroughly governed by 
duty. He lived only to please God; his daily life was a daily 
offering up of himself. All his letters to Mr. P. and o me 
since the war began, have breathed the spirit of a saint In 
•his last letter to me, he spoke of our precious Elbe, and the 
blessedness of being with her in heaven And now he la 
ioined her, and together they unite m ascribing praises to Him 
Iho has Adeemed them by His blood. Oh, the havoc death 
is making! The beautiful sky and the rich, perfumed air 
seemed darkened by oppressive sorrow. Who thinks or speaks 
of victory? The word is scarcely ever heard. Alas! Alas. 
When is the end to be?" , 

"May 15th, Friday: General Jackson wa| buried toflay, 
amid the flowing tears of a vast concourse of people By a 
strange coincidence, two cavalry cx>mpanies happened to be 
passing through Lexington from the West, ]nst at^ th ou 
of the ceremonies: they stopped, procured mourning foi then 
colors and ioined the procession. . . . . li^e exeici.e. 
were very appropriate: a touching voluntary was sung ^itl 
subdued,- sobbing voices; a prayer from Dr. Eamsey of most 



120 PROSE MISCELLANIES. 

melting tenderness; very true and discriminating remarks 

from Dr. White, and a beautiful prayer from W. F. J. . 

The cofRn was draped in the first Confederate flag ever made, 
and presented by Pres. Davis to Mrs. Jackson ; it was drapped 
around the coffin and on it were laid multitudes of wreathes 
and flowers which had been piled upon it all along the sad 
journey to Richmond and thence to Lexington. The grave, 
too, was heaped with flowers. And now it is all over, and the 
hero is left 'alone in his glory.' Not many better men have 
lived and died. His body-servant said to me, 'I never knew a 
piouser gentleman.' Sincerer mourning was never manifested 

for anyone, I do think The dear little child is so 

like her father; she is a sweet thing, and Avill be a blessing, I 
trust, to the heart-wrung mother." 

In his "End of an Era," John S. Wise writes: 

"It was a bitter, bitter day of mourning for all of us when 
the corps was marched down to the canal terminus, to meet all 
that was mortal of Stonewall Jackson. We had heard the 
name of every officer who attended the remains. 

"With reversed arms and muffled drums we bore him back 
to the Institute and placed him in the section-room in which he 
had taught. There the body lay in state until the following 
day. The lilacs and early spring flowers were just blooming. 
The number of people who came to view him for the last time 
was immense; men and women wept over his bier as if his 
death was a personal affliction ; then I saw that the Presbyte- 
rians could weep like other folks. The flowers piled about the 
coflfn hid it and its remains from view. I shall ever count it 
a great privilege that I was one of the guards, who through" 
the silence of the night, and when the crowds had departed, 
stood watch and w^ard alone with the remains of the great 
'Stonewall.' 

"Next day, we buried him with a pomp of woe, the cadets 
his escort of honor: with minute-guns, and tolling bells, and 
most impressive ceremonies, we bore him to his rest. But those 
ceremonies were to me far less impressive than walking post 
in that bare section-room, in the still hours of night, reflecting 
that there lay all that was left of one whose name still thrilled 
the world. 

"The burial of Stonewall Jackson made a deep impression 
upon the corps of cadets. It had been our custom, when things 
seemed to be going amiss in the army, to say. 'Wait until "Old 
Jack" gets there: he will straighten matters out.' We felt 
that the loss was irreparable. The cold face on which we had 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 121 

looked, taught us lessons which have been dropped from the 
curriculum in these tame days of peace. 

"Many a cadet resolved that he would delay no longer in 
offering his services to his country, and, although the end of 
the session was near at hand, several refused to remain longer, 
and resigned at once." 



An Incident in the Life of Epenetus 
Alexis Steed 

EPENETUS ALEXIS STEED: June 6, 1829 — November 9, 1885. 
Minister and Teacher: Graduate (Second Honor) Mercer Uni- 
versity, 1851 : Chair of Ancient Languages, Mississippi College at 
Clinton; Pastor of Thomson Baptist Church, Sweetwater, Greenwood 
and Pine Grove: Chair of Latin, Mercer University, 1872-1885. 

Sir Walter Scott used to say that he had never met any 
man from whom he could not learn something. No matter 
how ignorant the humblest citizen may appear to be, the 
chances are that he knows a few things which you do not 
know; and if you will "draw him out," you will add to your 
knowledge. 

The Virginia negro who happened to pass along the road 
while the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States was puzzling his brains, over the problem of mending 
his broken sulky-shaft, knew exactly the one tbing which 
John Marshall then needed to know. 

The great lawyer was at his wit's end, helpless and 
wretched. How could he mend that broken shaft, and con- 
tinue his journey? He did not know, and he turned to the 
negro for instruction. 

With an air of superiority which was not offensive at that 
particular moment, the negro drew his pocket knife, stepped 
into the bushes, cut a sapling, whittled a brace and spliced 
the broken shaft. 

When the Chief Justice expressed his wonder, admiration 
and pleasure, the negro calmly accepted the tribute to his 
talent — and walked off, remarking: '"''Some folks has got 
sense, and some ain't got none." 

******* 

That anecdote is a hundred years old, but it's a right good 
little story. A school-teacher, whom I loved very dearly, told 
it to me, when I was a lad. He was the only man I ever 
knew who had it in him to be a great man, and who refused 
to strive for great things, because, as he said, "/^ isn't worth 
the troubled 

He was naturally as great an orator as Blaine or Ben HilL 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 



123 



But after one of his magnificent displays of oratory, he would 
sink back into jolly indolence, and pursue the even tenor of 
his way, teaching school. "It is not worth while. Let the 
other fellow toil and struggle for fame and for office: I don't 
care. They are not worth the price," 

Few knew what was in this obscure teacher ; but those few 
knew him to be a giant. Once, at our College Commencement, 




EPENETUS ALEXIS STEED. 



(Mercer University, 1880,) the speaker who had been invited 
to make the regular address was the crack orator of the State. 
He was considered a marvel of eloquence. Well, he came and 
he delivered his message; and it was all very chaste and ele- 
gant and superb. Indeed, a fine speech. He sat down amid 
loud applause. Everybody satisfied. Then the obscure genius 
to whom I have referred rose to talk. By some chance, the 
Faculty had given him a place on the program. 

I looked at my old school-teacher, as he waddled quietly 
to the front. I saw that his face was pale, and his eyes blaz- 



124 



PROBE MISCELLANIES. 



ing. I felt that the presence and the speech of the cele- 
brated orator had aroused the indolent giant. I hneiv Iw 
would carry that crowd by storm — would rise, rise into the 
very azure of eloquence, and hover above us, like an eagle in 
the air. 

And he did. 




SEATED, ON LEFT, PitOF, E, A. STEED, THOS. W. 

STEED AT RIGJIT. STANDING: JAMES 

HAMILTON ON RIGHT: L. CARLTON 

SMITH, ON LEFT. 



Men and women, boys and girls, laughed and cheered and 
cried, and hung breathless on his every word, as no crowd 
ever does unless a born orator gets hold of it. Actually, I got 
to feeling sorry for the celebrity who had made the set speech. 
He sat there looking like a cheap piece of neglected toy work 
of last Christmas. 

The faces of the leading people, after my old teacher had 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 125 

sat down, were a study. The expression seemed to say, "Who 
would have thought it was in him?" 

I did not applaud : No. But I looked at my old teacher, 
through a mist of happy tears; and my lips quivered, uncon- 
trollably : he saw it ; and I think he was deeply pleased. 

We talked of it, later, in our chummy way ; and we laughed 
over the surprise he had given everybody. I never saw him, 
again. 
• I don't think he ever made another speech. 

The brilliant eyes will blaze no more. The merry smile 
faded, long ago. That great head, fit to bear a crown, lies 
low, for all the years to come. 

He left no lasting memorial to his genius. Only, as 
through a glass, darkly, you may see him in a book called 
"Bethany," written by one in whom he, the unambitious, 
kindled the spark of an ambition that Will never die. 



Fortitude 



T^ O not become discouraged ! Don't lose heart. 

You may not be able to see the harvest where you have 
patiently sown the seed, but be assured of this: No seed is 
lost. 

The truthful word manfully spoken, the earnest effort hon- 
estly made, the noble creed consistentyl held, — these are things 
which do not perish; they live on and move the world and 
mould the destinies of men, long aft^r you are dust. 

Leave cowardice to the cowards; leave servility to the 
slaves. Be a man — proud, though in homespun; free, though 
in a hut. 
,^ Own your own soulj^^ 

Dare to listen to your own heartbeat. Between you and 
God's sunlight, let no shadow of fear fall. 

What is there to live for, if you are never to think, never 
to speak, never to act, save as the echo of some master? Bet- 
ter the death of the brave than the long misery of the mental 
serf. 

Not always is it easy to know the right, — very often is the 
road rough. Human praise can be won by shorter routes. 
Honors and riches are not always its rewards. Pleasanter 
days and calmer nights may be yours, if you float smoothly 
down the tide of policy, — steering deftly by the rules of the 
expedient. 

But has life nothing loftier than this? Is there no divine 
voice within you that calls for better things? Is there no 
great pulse-beat of duty within you, — no flame of the warrior 
spirit, when insolent wrong flings its gage of battle at your 
feet? 

Are you willing that the Right shall call for aid, and you 
give no succor ; that Truth shall plead for help, and you bear 
no witness? 

Is the sacred torch of Liberty — passed on from hand to 
hand, down the ages in which brave men dared to keep it lit — 
to find you unwilling to hold it aloft? 

Shall the temple of civic freedom, reared by the great men 
who are gone, stand vacant, — calling mutely, calling vainly 
for votaries at the shrine? 

Was it all a mockery, — this long struggle your forefathers 



PROSE MISCELLANIES. 127 

made for Justice ? Is it an idle tale— this story of the heroism 
with which the rights of the people were slowly won? 

Not so— not so! Levity may slight, and ignorance may 
disregard the blessed heir-looms of human endeavor, of pa- 
triotic purpose, of high-minded self-sacrifice, — ^but they are 
there, and, like the signal fires of the highlands, they call heroic 
hearts to duty! 

You may have desponded, but you must not despair. You 
may have stumbled, but you must not fall. You will rouse 
yourself, and press forward. You will do your duty— for that 
is your religion. 

If Wrong triumphs, it shall not claim you as a partner in 
the crime. 

If the light dies out in the homes of th© people, the curse ,^ 
of the unhappy shall not blast your name. 

You shall bee-aziffi»«,— loyal, fearless, independent, ready 
for work, and loyal to the last, to the creed which your heart 
approves, i, ^i i Lt)'' ^'VUx^v^'^ 

Men/, like these,— and no others,— won every treasure in 
the storehouse of liberty, every jewel in the crown of good 
government, every thread in the golden tissue of religious and 
political freedom, , 

Men likie these,— and no other,— are going to keep alive the 
sacred fires our fathers Idndled, are going to stamp out the 
foul heresies that imperil our rights, are going to fight to the 
death those who would turn back the march of human happi- 
ness, and are going to re-dedicate this government to the 
principles upon which it was founded! 

Stand firm and fear not. 

Brave men who are nothing more than brave, rush into the 
combat, get worsted and quit. 

Brave men, who are something more than brave, take no 
defeat as final. 

FINIS. 



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